


Duck, Duck, Goose

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: City of David [1]
Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: "A lot of people lived", Abandonment, Alibis, Archangel Corps, Arguing, Arranged Marriage, Awkward Blow Jobs, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bad Sex, Biblical References, Boy-Who-Lived, Canon Compliant through Beware Those Closest to You, Children, Claire Riesen's childhood, Claire misunderestimates David, Class Issues, Combat, Communication Failure, David Whele backstory, David Whele's winning parenting, David misunderestimates Claire, Death Threats, Defiance, Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Dynastic Succession, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Baggage, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Lovers, Episode: s01e05 Something Borrowed, Episode: s01e08 Beware Those Closest to You, Erectile Dysfunction, Ethnic slurs, Evidence, F/M, Fake Character Death, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, First Time Blow Jobs, Flashbacks, Frenemies, Government Conspiracy, Hidden agenda's, Hope, Implied/Referenced Character Death, In-Laws, Innocence, Internal Conflict, Is this a date? Are we dating?, Keep Your Enemies Closer, Laundry, Love, Loyalty, Manipulation, Memories, Minions, Morning Sickness, Or What You Will, Overconfidence, Past Child Abuse, Penis In Vagina Sex, Plot twist?, Politics, Power Dynamics, Present Tense, Propaganda, Purges, Putting On a Brave Face, Regret, Religion, Remorse, Resentment, Rumors, Secret pregnancy, Secrets, Self Loathing, Social Justice, Song Lyrics, Strength, Theology, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Villain Protagonist, Vomiting, Westermarch Effect, What Doesn't Kill You Can Still Seriously Mess You Up, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived, avoiding sex, desert survival, discussion of drinking urine, discussion of urination, executions, fairy tale references, faith - Freeform, false paternity, falsely attributed motives, first kill, guarded optimism, hidden motives, keeping the lighter, letting your guard down, mutual distrust, passing the torch, pawns, sad sex, self deception, slander, stay tuned for sequel "Thorns", sunday school, the other kind of 'fluff', traps and set-ups, where you stand depends on where you sit, wish you were here?, witnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 38,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2885000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire and David play at being a family, for keeps and for all the marbles.  It's the only way each of them knows to protect their own children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters 1-7 Make Up Part I: Heart Shaped Box
> 
> Chapters 8-14 Make Up Part II: Purge
> 
> Chapters 15-21 Make Up Part III: Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"  
> Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"  
> God say, "No." Abe say, "What ?"  
> God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but  
> The next time you see me comin' you better run"  
> Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"  
> God says. "Out on Highway 61".  
> ~Bob Dylan

David drives into the desert, into the night, working hard at not thinking. Muffled sobs assault him from the back of the SUV, the disconsolate, incoherent weeping of his sedated prisoner. A man trapped in a nightmare, raging against intoxicants that have been forced into his veins. His son, William, bound, hooded and effectively gagged. He has joked about wanting this, more times than he can count. He has taunted the boy with it, lightly and viciously, drunk and sober. The reality of course, falls short of the fantasy. David's necessary acts sicken him. And still, after all these years, still, at the age of twenty-seven, still though he is supposed to be a grown and married man, a priest, a pope, an anti-Christ—still William will not stop crying.

“Oh, for Pity’s sake! Shut your mouth!” David shouts, a mere expression of emotion, no true communication intended, like yelling at a colicky baby. “You're no son of mine!” Would to God (or to someone a lot more reliable) that that were true. Then he could do the smart thing, instead of this half-assed plan he has cooked up, which stabs at too many different goals and accomplishes nothing for certain, all risks and no benefits.

The ghosts in David's head won't shut up either, and finally, he sings along with them. Anything to drown out the sobbing. The ghosts sing of ghosts, one lost world glorifying another. “♫Father Abraham has many sons! How many son's hath father Abraham!♪” Only two, actually, just like David himself. The song is not scriptural as he was fond of pointing out, once upon a time, just to get his father's goat. He had been younger than William then, but a father of two already, a snot-nosed little patriarch.

And now? Now... it isn't so funny. Thinking of his ridiculous running battle of wits with his father makes him feel anything but clever. Years wasted on passive aggressive cock and bull posturing. It all means nothing now. Charles's blood is long dry on Jehovah’s alter along with the blood of his mother and sister and grandfather and countless billions of others. And David is driving William into the desert.

~~~~~

Claire waits. David has been gone all night and well into the morning. Burning William's body no doubt, far from the city walls where there is no one to see his honest tears or lack there of. The funeral will be staged again tomorrow using the burned body of an Acolyte. William will have panicked at Gabriel's approach, will have been dragged from his hiding place and slaughtered, unheroically as promised, not because he stood in Gabriel's way, but merely because he was called 'Principate.' To some, he will still be a martyr, not least because she must appear to wish it so. Too much depends upon her apparent love for her late husband.

While she waits, Claire rereads Alex's letter. She reads it a dozen times, a hundred, more. Finally, when she can see the words as well with her eyes closed as with them open, she lights one corner on a candle, lays it gently on her hearth, and replays his words in her mind as they burn. Alex's letter is too dangerous to exist, too foolish to have ever been written. He is a child in the same way that those born After will always be children. He has never seen a world unmade, never had to unlearn the words to 'Jesus Loves Me' and question what it means to 'know' anything. Even with the words etched on his skin 'Beware those closest to you', he has trusted Ethan with their secret and provided written proof. Savior, he may be, but Alex Lannon is no politician and though her faith in him is still rock solid, Claire knows now that there are ways in which she will never be able to trust him. And so, she waits for David.

She is tempted to have a drink, a little liquid courage. Something to keep every cell of her body from screaming in protest against what she is waiting to do. Something to keep her from jumping up and bolting the door, from hiding in her room, from fleeing the city like her father. But Claire has already had to drink more than is healthy in the past 48 hours for the sake of appearing to celebrate her marriage, and of course, to toast her agreements with David. Besides, she needs to stay sharp. Her battle with David is only beginning, and she may yet need to drink with her enemy.

~~~~~

It will take a miracle for William to survive a week out here alone. But David Whele no longer prays for miracles. If William's blood is to be on his hands, it will not be quite as literally as his mother's was. That's the best he can do. It's not good enough. What is anymore? What ever was?

Everything, that's what. Never mind paradise. He'll take the parking lot. The parking lots were glorious in those days. He latches on to one day in particular. Tailgating at an OBU football game. No booze, not just because it's not allowed, but because he's never needed it. The bliss of ignorance and the excitement of sport and good company are enough. Music is playing somewhere nearby, not his taste, enough that he imagines he's inconvenienced by it, annoyed.

♫ _I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. ♪_

_♫ I wish I could start this whole thing over again. ♪_

_♫ I'm not sayin' that you could ever be true. ♪_

_♫ I just don't what to know how it ends.... ♪_

The modified gas gauge on his ancient, well preserved, vehicle dings, pulling David, unwillingly into the present. Bingo. The point of no return in this world without gas stations. David has lost his spare gas can. Fresh memories of dying screams only make him angry. He could have hunted up another one, but it wouldn't matter. He has driven far enough into the desert to hide a body from the regular patrols and enough in the wrong direction to avoid any trade routs. If he's gone much longer than it'll take to get back from here, Claire will only become suspicious.

Besides, the absence of such a 'powerful' man from the 'great city' will soon become inconvenient to explain. Power, David scoffs. He has never been so helpless. In his day, 'Brother David' has lead congregations larger than the City of Vega without ever imagining himself a world leader. The last prayer he ever had answered was not to be such a small fish in a big pond. That was 'God' for you. Mysterious ways. The little power that 'Consul Whele' has over this situation he puts in his son's hands. A loaded Derringer. Three days worth of food and water. A choice? A chance? Not much of either, really. He doesn't know what else to do.

~~~~~

As the morning gets older, Claire continues to wait. Her status as a new-made widow gives her the right to be left alone, at least for a few hours, even in such troubled times. While she waits, she signs her name, over and over, a dozen different ways. Lady Riesen, Lady Whele, Lady Riesen-Whele. Lady Claire-Isabella. Even without the comfort of a drink, Claire does not hide. Isabella does not flee. Instead, she goes over her battle plan again, looking for a flaw, a reason to believe it could never work. An excuse not to try it, half wishing she'd never thought of it, wishing to have been born a helpless, useless, empty headed princess. An innocent, helplessly awaiting her Savior. But Claire-Isabella is not a princess, not a prize, not a victim, not a hostage in a tower waiting to be rescued. She is the Lady of the City of Vega. She knows her plan can work, can keep her secret, can keep her baby safe. That knowledge leaves her no choice. And so she waits. For David.

~~~~~

David says the words without meaning them. At least it starts out that way. He is comforting his son, calling him loyal, worthy, strong. Shushing and clucking over him like a colicky baby. It is only as he speaks that he realizes what he is saying is true. William could have sold him out, maybe even saved himself. He didn't. It is a priceless act of devotion. David drives all afternoon and into the evening, returning to the city alone. He has to keep a close guard on his sanity, tormented by the useless and pointless knowledge that his son, William Whele, Principate of the Savior and Chief Acolyte of Gabriel, loves him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track  
> "Heart Shaped Box" (Kurt Cobain)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nirvana/heartshapedbox112621.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6P0SitRwy8 
> 
> "Highway 61" (Bob Dylan)  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/highway-61-revisited  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-zkC0wYwOo 
> 
> "Father Abraham"  
> http://www.songsforteaching.com/religious/biblesongs/davidandgoliath/fatherabraham.htm  
> https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090427153802AA1lhR2 
> 
> "Jesus Loves Me" (Anna Bartlett Warner, William B. Bradbury)  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Loves_Me  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owx3ao42kwI
> 
> "Big Yellow Taxi" (Joni Mitchell)  
> http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=208  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHHybj3NpJ0 
> 
> "Wish I Didn't Know Now" (Toby Keith)  
> http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/keith-toby/wish-i-didnt-know-now-1347.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu6dL8QJU_A 
> 
> "Tombstone Blues" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/tombstone-blues  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6yWZUv9QJA


	2. Heart Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You walk into the room  
> With your pencil in your hand  
> You see somebody naked  
> And you say, “Who is that man?”  
> You try so hard  
> But you don’t understand  
> Just what you’ll say  
> When you get home.  
> Because something is happening here  
> But you don’t know what it is  
> Do you, Mister Jones?  
> ~Bob Dylan

Gabriel descends quietly, keeping the sound of flapping wings to a minimum. He's actually quite good at moving silently, when he wants to. He stands and watches for a little while as the old man refills his tank from a large gas can. “Good evening, General,” he says at last. Riesen starts at the sound of his voice. He covers his emotional response quickly, but not quickly enough. Nor deeply enough. “I'm sorry, General,” Gabriel smirks, as his old enemy slowly turns to face him, projecting every outwards sign of calm. “I didn't mean to give you a heart attack.”

~~~~~

David pulls into the garage and parks. It's dark, so at least the knowledge of exactly when he has returned is limited to his own household, for now. His all-new guards welcome him. His cover story is that he has been doing some special, secret thing in response to Gabriel's incursion, at Claire's behest, of course. Except that he actually has been, David remembers, amused at himself. Even he can hardly keep up with when he is lying and when he's telling the truth.

She is waiting, of course, not a quarter mile away at House Riesen. Waiting for news of William's death, for a heart in a box that she can eat without salt and never look back. David is in no mood to watch the girl play at being queen, a girl he has seen stage battles between a Christmas tree topper and a squadron of barbie dolls. But like the rich and mad, Claire plays with real soldiers now, not toys. He will go to her. But not yet.

David withdraws to his study. He pours a double Bourbon, straight up, and settles into a different kind of solitude, giving himself permission not to think. He lets the alcohol burn his throat and ease his pain. He lets the tension melt from his muscles and confidence seep through his veins. David Whele is getting ready to perform. When he is fully relaxed, he starts to get into character. He is a hard-ass, hypocritical, hedonist, hierophant; unable to forgive his son despite his own failings. He is a complex, flawed character, but not a villain, an opportunist and a patriot. Whatever his differences with House Riesen, their common enmity for Gabriel is paramount. He loves the City of Vega with all his heart. He wants it for his own. It is all that is left to him now.

Yes. That's it. Perfect. He opens his eyes. Showtime.

~~~~~

“Consul Whele to see you, My Lady.” Slow building dread becomes sudden, chest-squeezing panic.

“Of course,” Claire says, smiling politely, dabbing at her entirely dry eyes. “I'll see him at once.”

“In the East Room?” Claire has anticipated this question, stratagized. She is not happy with her response, but can think of nothing better.

“No,” she says, going for a kind of sad-tired nonchalance, “It's late. I'll just see him in here.” The worried look is vague enough that it might only be concern for her wellbeing, not suspicion as to why she's inviting David Whele into her bedroom at ten o'clock at night, twelve hours before her husband's funeral. Hopefully, the servants and guards will tell themselves that the two mourners are sharing their sorrow. Or plotting their revenge.

“Claire,” he says, in a convincing tone of fatherly affection. As always though, the glint in his eyes is subtly unfatherly, predatory. She supposes she ought to be glad of that tonight, ready to use it to her advantage. But it turns her stomach, even more than usual. He squeezes her hand, giving her an appropriately somber look; mildly sad eyes, broken smile. Impossible to read. Or rather, easy. Easy to read whatever you want, whatever you expect.

When the door closes, David's expression changes. It is sadder, but also angry. Unkind. Somehow both hostile and conspiratorial. Claire feels relieved, finding her feet on more familiar ground.

~~~~~

The desert night is cold as hell. William walks more for the sake of staying warm than to get anywhere. Besides, he knows better than to do his walking under the desert sun. He must make what little water his father has left him last as long as possible. If he can keep going long enough, he may be able to reach one of the free settlements, tiny knots of humanity that either prefer freedom to security or just plain never made it into a city before the walls went up.

That's his backup plan. More of a demonstration really. He knows Gabriel will never come for him if he doesn't stand on his own two feet and at least make a showing of some ability to fend for himself. Someone who lets himself become a victim, who merely sits and waits to be rescued, is not strong. Not worthy.

William has been broken today, in places he hadn't even realized were still whole enough to break. He tries to think of it as an opportunity. To grow in strength and become more valuable to Gabriel. But it hurts to remember the ferocity of his father's last embrace and to know that there was love to lose there after all.

~~~~~

“Please,” Claire says, her voice tight, her body language tense, surprisingly awkward, “have a seat.” Claire gestures towards the small ornate settee at the foot of her bed. There's a look on her face, neither blank nor candid, smile nor frown. She hides the specifics of her feelings well enough but not the fact that she is guarded, ill at ease. Her first murder, David realizes, with just a hint of quasi-parental pride, tinged with black irony. Her first bloodstained high-level cover up.

Claire has a lot of growing still to do as a politician. She is only a moderately talented performer. But she's a strategic thinker. And she at least has some guts, if not quite 'the heart and stomach of a king'. She'll get better at it. All of it. Whether that will ultimately be more to David's benefit or his detriment remains to be seen. The fact remains that she _is_ queen of this gilded little city now and whatever else he manages to do, David had best convince her that he is her obedient if not quite humble servant. Her Kissinger. Her son-of-a-bitch. Her huntsman. Indispensable. It may not be an easy sell, but it has the modest and minor virtue of being true. Like her father, Claire is and will always be just a little bit too good for her position. She will need someone to feed Christians to the lions and murder little girls.

David reaches into his pocket for something he has brought to distract Claire from the fact that he does not have William's heart in a box. But when he looks up, he catches her glancing uneasily, guiltily, at the bed. David has to suppress a smile. She is thinking of William. It pleases him for more than one reason. It plays into his hand, of course. It helps with the emotional turmoil he hopes to create, to keep her attention from drifting to the fact that his trip into the desert should have been unnecessary, even counter productive. That William's body needed to have been displayed, not hidden. That she has not seen one shred of evidence to suggest that he is actually dead. That she is taking David's word for gospel despite his proven ability and excellent motivation to lie to her.

The other reason—pitifully enough, the stronger reason—that David is pleased is that the object of Claire's regretful glance gives him some hope that William has at least managed the minimum standard of manhood necessary to bed his own wife on his wedding night. From the angry quality of his son's embarrassment when he had tried to broach the subject the morning after, David had gotten more or less the opposite impression. Now, he is, if not quite proud of his son, at least relieved for him, finding him a bit less pathetic.

“David,” Claire says, turning to him so gravely that he instinctively takes his hand from his pocket empty, waiting to hear her revelation before he decides whether to go through with the scene he's rehearsed, waiting to calculate whether his little gift will turn her attention from the exact circumstances of William's supposed death more or less than whatever is clearly so deeply plaguing her already. “We need to talk,” she says, having to work much too hard at looking him in the eye. “About solidifying the union of our two houses.” She takes a deep breath and steadies both her voice and her eyes, leveling them at him like the scope and barrel of a riffle. “More than talk,” she clarifies. “We need to do something about it. Tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Ballad of a Thin Man" Bob Dylan  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDC0b7rfK5U  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/ballad-thin-man


	3. Variations on a Theme for a King and Lyre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hysterical bride in the penny arcade  
> Screaming she moans, “I’ve just been made”  
> Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade  
> Says, “My advice is to not let the boys in”  
> Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside  
> He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride  
> “Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride  
> You will not die, it’s not poison.”  
> ~Bob Dylan

The look on David's face is unsettled, genuinely confused, disbelieving. She has shocked him, Claire realizes, disconcerted by the notion. David Whele is horrified, grasping at the vain hope that he has misunderstood her. Not willing to process that, she plows forward with her explanation, her excuses. She has no choice. Her father is gone. Michael is gone. Alex is gone. Becca is gone. William is gone. There is only David, dark but familiar. Or Arika, with her priestess, all sweet seeming mystery, trying to bend her toward Helena. Vega is her City. It's future is in her hands, and she cannot make a not-rival-but-enemy of the one other person she's sure gives a damn about that. “I married William because it was the right thing for Vega,” she insists earnestly, pressing true word into the service of a lie, “For our two houses to become one. For House Riesen and House Whele to have a joint heir. His death doesn't change that.”

“Maybe not, Claire,” David all but snarls, his voice dripping with sardonic acid, “but somehow I don't think your stallion is going to be up to playing stud in his condition. I guess, we just have to hope the little cowboy got lucky on the first shot.”

Claire can't hide her own shock at his apparently sincere assumption that she and William actually consummated their marriage. She's been assuming David would have pried the truth from his son all too easily. For example, as easily as he has gotten it from her just now. “Oh! gldt!” David begins a exclamation that Claire is fairly certain started out to be 'God' but which ends up only as a choking sound of consternation, slamming his fist against the settee so hard it makes her jump a little in surprise. “Why couldn't my idiot son do one thing right in his entire useless life!?! And you? I mean for Vega's sake, Claire, you'll be thirty years old next month. What were you waiting for, menopause?”

It's no good mourning the possibility that she could have passed the child off as William's, even to David, after all, so Claire tells herself, half convincingly, that he always would have suspected otherwise and that he might not have counted a child of William's as family enough to protect, under the circumstances. “Ovulation, actually,” she says, answering his backhanded question straight on, as matter-of-factly as she can manage, avoiding the lasers that are his eyes. “Which didn't happen until today.”

For a moment, the silence between them is grim, heavy. Then it is broken by a sharp, contemptuous sniff from David, scornful, but less than a laugh. In that instant, Claire is certain he is on to her, somehow he has worked the whole thing out. But the fuller laugh that follows, broken and ironic though it may be, floods her with relief as does the familiar wicked smile that flickers across the Consul's face. “Claire, Claire, Claire,” he says, with a strange combination of amusement, censure and admiration, shaking his head in disbelief, “I honestly believe that is the single most coldblooded proposition—of any kind—I've ever gotten. From anyone,” he adds wonderingly. “Man, woman or angel.”

“I know it's...” Claire struggles for words, not liking the ones that come most readily to mind. Words like 'disgusting', 'reprehensible', and 'sick'. “...a lot to ask,” she concludes finally. “But the needs of the City have to come first. And this City needs our two Houses to produce a single heir.”

“I need a drink,” David declares, and without further preamble, rises and goes directly to the open liquor cabinet. Before Claire can formulate an objection, he has poured two double Bourbons straight up and handed her a glass. It's good she didn't have time to object, Claire realizes. David is not easily put off by excuses, and she has never shown a reluctance to drink before when the company or the circumstances have called for it as these so clearly do. If she refuses to drink with him now, no matter what she says about it, he will wonder what the real reason is. It will gnaw at him and he will worry at it until he puzzles it out. That can't happen. “Vega,” she says perfunctorily, raising her glass.

David drinks thirstily, saying nothing and giving no visual sign of solute in return. When he has drained off half the whiskey in a single swallow, he sits a moment, staring down at the glass in his hands, looking very tired and older even than his considerable years. “No,” he says, with a little shake of his head. “It's impossible. The people would never accept us as husband and wife.” Claire's heart drops and her face with it, but David seems not to notice. Maybe he doesn't notice. He isn't even looking at her. “It would be a breach of faith,” he muses on uninterrupted, “shattering the fantasy we've already sold them about you and William.”

“I know,” Claire says carefully, with a miserable apologetic little smile. Even that she can't maintain, doesn't want to. There is nothing between them to smile about and she doesn't want to start this... whatever it is, by seeming apologetic, acknowledging a debt. This union is his doing in the first place, Claire reminds herself, a goal he has been working towards since she was a child. She shows him a face of grim resolve and makes a show of laying her cards on the table. “The people would have to accept the child as William's. Which means it's got to be born in the next 280 days. David, this has to happen tonight.”

~~~~~

The bitch. The miserable, evil, conniving bitch. She's pregnant, of course. By her inconveniently important lover. Her own personal savior. A man after God's own heart. As bloodstained high-level coverups go, it's one of the classics of the form. Uglier than he had thought her capable of. Nothing he wouldn't do in her place, with both a child and an empire to protect, but still.... Half an hour of probing has detected no weakness in her resolve. She is seriously suggesting that he mate with her—from his supposed point of view, breed with her—within hours of executing his son, her husband, who was in love with her, on her orders. Maybe Lady Claire-Isabella can work her way up to handling her own lions after all. In which case he'll be far less useful to her.

David tosses back the rest of his drink and meets her eyes at last. She doesn't even seem to be trying to hide her emotions anymore. Unless she's suddenly become an astonishing actress in the last few minutes, her true feelings are all over her face. She is sorry, but not sorry enough to relent. She is terrified of being turned down but horrified of being accepted. And she hates him. No, not hates. Despises. She honestly thinks he is monster enough to do what she thinks he believes she is asking. He'd better man up to being her monster then. Otherwise he's no use at all, which puts him in a terrible bargaining position. Even worse than he's in now, which is no position for bargaining at all. That being the case, David resolves to change his position. He will be more than useful, to Claire. He will be indispensable. He will solve her insoluble problem and put her in his debt in the process, not to mention gaining multiple layers of secrets to hold over her at the right moment.

He won't feel bad about it. It's not like she's left him much of a choice. In Claire's Classical Political Theater, David has not landed the role of his namesake. She has cast him as Uriah, and if he isn't up to rolling with the modern plot twist, he literally might not survive into the second act. The way Claire is looking at him now, with thinly disguised contempt and open determination, David has no illusions about her ability to find a battle for him to be pushed to the front of before her pregnancy come to light. Especially now that he's gone and run his mouth about realizing William didn't get the job done, and—worse still—she's admitted it in so many words. A stupid mistake. On both their parts.

It's been a rough couple of days. David hasn't slept in forty hours and he doubts Claire has slept much either. Neither of them is at the top of their game, and here they are playing for such stakes! David feels a tiny spark of sympathy and affection for Claire, who is, after all, doing the best she can in an impossible situation. He blows gently on that little ember of genuine fellow feeling, nourishing it with memories of a clever, brave child shining like a beacon of hope, a dream of purpose, for a camp of beleaguered survivors. Not exactly the stuff triple X fantasies are made of, but he doesn't completely hate her, and that's progress.

David lets his eyes soften and lays a gentle hand on Claire's cheek. She flinches from his touch, eyes flashing anger and disgust, then stands abruptly. It's a terrible attempt to cover her reaction but David doesn't see the advantage in calling her on it. This is going to be difficult for both of them. They need to help each other make it work. David stands too and reaches out to take her glass. “I'll put these away,” he says quietly, headed for the dumbwaiter. “You get the lights.”

Clair hesitates. David can't have that. He knocks back the remains of Claire's less than half drunk Whiskey, and set's the glasses in the dumbwaiter. Uncertainty is the enemy. This has to happen tonight or it won't. And as much as he'd rather be anywhere else, having sex with Claire Riesen is hardly a fate worse than death. Or killing her, which is what he'd end up having to do instead. He thinks of her at five or six, stomping around with her father's boots on. “Unless, of course,” he teases a playful grin on his lips and a lustful glint in his eye, playing the part she has written, “you'd rather do it with the lights on.”

Claire turns the lights off and, in the dim illumination of their golden city shining through the window, silently approaches the bed and begins to undress. David turns from her and draws the curtains. He was bluffing of course. Darkness is absolutely necessary, and not just for the opportunity to put a different face on his too familiar companion. Though thankfully his ribs no longer need to be taped up, his body is still bruised and scarred. He still bears the mark of Gabriel.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tombstone Blues" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/tombstone-blues  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6yWZUv9QJA 


	4. Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temptation's page flies out the door  
> You follow, find yourself at war  
> Watch waterfalls of pity roar  
> You feel to moan but unlike before  
> You discover  
> That you'd just be  
> One more person crying.  
> So don't fear if you hear  
> A foreign sound to you ear  
> It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.  
> ~Bob Dylan

In the dark, Claire Riesen feels like any other naked woman. His hands on her breasts, his lips on her neck, her tight, bare not-yet-thirty-year-old ass spooned against his crotch, touching his dick. Which you'd think would be harder by now. 'Maybe I _have_ had too much whiskey,' David thinks, but he knows that's not really it. It could be the fact that he's trying to fuck his son's wife, knowing perfectly well that they are still married and that William's warped little heart would be crushed by it. But this is nothing compared to the stinking mass of squelchy, crusted infinitely layered betrayal that already separates David from his son. Besides, whatever words have been spoken in childish solemnity, 'under the embrace of the savior', David knows well enough that he is really cuckolding Alex Lannon. Buoyed a little by that thought, he lets his hands rove over her belly and thighs and finally (feeling silly for hesitating, as if there were really some sacred mystery there!) briefly runs his fingers through the wild curls of her untrimmed bush before letting his hands roam upwards again. She shifts awkwardly against him with a little noise of discomfort that only wants to be desire.

David resolves to touch Claire's genitals again, to caress them much more intimately. To try to get the girl wet enough to smell her for inspiration. But all that hair is putting him off. It must be that, he decides, though Arika's hairy snatch has never bothered him. Maybe because she is foreign and exotic? Whatever the reason, David is bothered. Sometimes, he's amazed at how much vanity has been stripped away from this world only to leave so much still behind, like the stains of water and smoke on the walls of a burned out building. In David Whele's day, in the days before flood and fire, even girls who wanted to be nuns trimmed their pubic hair. The discovery of which now ranks as only the _second_ guiltiest David has ever felt while touching a naked woman, though there may be a resonance factor, actually. 

_♫_ _Finger tips have memories; Mine can't forget the curves of your body..._ _♪_ It's among the stupidest songs ever recorded, and fortunately Eleanor agrees. Which gives them something to talk about even before he knows her name is Eleanor long enough for him to find out, long enough for him to have an inkling of how important she will be to him and to shrug it off. David has a girlfriend. Or, okay, a girl he likes to think of as his future girlfriend. A good Christian girl. The  _right_ kind of Christian. Also beautiful. Prettier than Eleanor, he can tell, even in this dim light in the middle of this distracting, squirming, amorphous mass of humanity. 

“I think maybe it's a song about this party,” she quips, continuing in the same vein as his opening remark.

“It's certainly hot enough in here,” David agrees.

“Like an oven,” Eleanor echos, fanning herself with her left hand. Her right hand has not stopped doing what it has been doing all along, the thing that drew his eye to her in the first place, purely out of curiosity. “And I'm pretty sure the barfing contest has already started,” Eleanor continues, keeping the banter going, giving him the wonderful sense that she doesn't want it to end any more than he does.

“Oh, come on,” David says, taking the contrary position without thinking, out of well established habit. “They don't really get _that_ drunk, do they?”

Eleanor's laugh is not like heavenly music, but it is nice. Light. Genuinely happy. Not unkind the way laughter can be. “You don't get out much, do you?” she asks. Somehow she doesn't make it sound like an insult, the way the guys from his dorm did when they were hectoring him into coming here. (“Dude! You cannot spend _every_ Saturday night playing ping pong at the ABS House!”) More like a sympathetic observation.

“I do, too!” David protests anyway, not one to accept even the mildest criticism without a fight.

He feels a stab of guilt, like an imaginary cock crowing at him for pretending to belong here. He should go, he thinks, but then Eleanor smiles at him again, a little skeptically. She makes such a beautiful skeptic. “What about you?” he challenges. “This” he gestures at the room in general, “doesn't exactly look like your natural habitat either, if you don't mind a compliment.”

More pretty smiling, slightly embarrassed this time. She might even be blushing a little. It's hard to tell in this complete lack of light. “Oh no,” she says, very mock-seriously. “I come to these parties all the time.”

Now it's David's turn to smile. “The way you're worrying that crucifix really helps sell that,” he teases. Her smile is one of good-natured capitulation now, his of friendly triumph. He has won the point and (even more importantly) very mildly impressed her by doing so. David quickly capitalizes on his victory, offering terms for a lasting alliance. Of course, she absolutely agrees with him that young people today spend much too much time thinking about dating and relationships, when they ought to be focused on their education. Eleanor herself isn't rushing into anything, not even with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is her first choice for a husband. Socially, they both agree, the best way to get through these years when no one can reasonably expect to be married is just to relax and enjoy making new friends. Who can be any religion. Which leads naturally to the very salient observation that students of any religion are welcome to play ping pong at the ABS House (where there are perfectly good snacks and soft drinks guaranteed to _be_ soft) any time. Right now, for example.

Sarah Jane is there, like always, but for once he hardly notices. For one thing, Eleanor is a lot better at ping pong, and a lot more willing to play with him. She doesn't expect him to let her win either, which he doesn't. She is suddenly prettier, even under harsh florescents, flushed and breathless from enthusiastic, playful struggle. It is an observation he will have the opportunity to make more fully, again and again through the years, Eleanor, sweating and joyful with exertion. They will get over feeling guilty. With the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ and the state of Arkansas, there will be only bliss.

“David?” Claire's voice is genuinely worried, and yet there is a bit of a edge to it. “Are you alright?” she asks, but her tone reveals a meaning somewhere between 'are you all right' and 'why are you inconveniencing me like this' with maybe just a hint of 'what are you up to now, you sneaky old bastard.' Scolding him like a child, he thinks with a stab of resentment, just because he can't throw her down and instantly fuck her like some twenty-five-year-old action hero. But the harder notes are gone from her voice when she says, “My word, David, you're shaking.” Her unleavened concern is even more humiliating, especially with tears burning in his eyes.

“Suck my dick,” he says, as abruptly as the thought comes to him. It sounds like a harsh, flippant dismissal, even to his own ears, and she reacts with definite bristling. But he means it as a serious suggestion, which is something he thinks she ought to be able to figure out in this context. “I'm having a little trouble performing, Claire,” he explains, trying unsuccessfully to keep a note of exasperation out of his voice, hating that she has made him put such a fine point on the obvious. “If you want this to happen, I need a little help.”

David swears he can _hear_ her nose crinkle. “Do people really do that?” she asks, reminding him much too much of her little girl self, constantly incredulous over some alien feature of the lost world. Did people really fly across oceans, make phone calls to China, beam signals to robots in outer space who could tell them to turn left at the Exxon station in 2.4 miles?

“They do if they're trying to give a sixty-year-old man a hard-on when he's tired enough to pass out,” David retorts impatiently, not liking the ugly sneer in his voice, groping for something lighter to say, by way of not too explicit apology. “And here I used to think I was overselling the importance of television in teaching sexual depravity to otherwise sheltered young people from good homes.”

Claire seems neither amused nor mollified, but at least she isn't getting out of bed. “Alright,” she says, “you're the expert on depravity, here. Just tell me what to do?” _That_ , of all possible pronouncements, makes his dick twitch just a little after all, but the effect is ruined by her noticing and being annoyed by it. “Really, David?” she says, rolling to face him.

“We want what we want, Claire,” he replies ostentatiously unapologetic, giving her his best devilish grin.

“Do you need to tie me to the bedposts?” she asks, teasing, only mildly facetious, seeing the humor in the situation a little at least though she is, if possible, even less happy to be doing this than he is.

“Not a chance,” David counters, nursing the tiny trickle of playful give and take that has finally started to flow between them. “I want you to be absolutely free... to do everything I say.” Claire nearly laughs at that, and is less tense because of it. David feels genuine relief and a slyly growing confidence that he can do this after all. “In fact,” he goes on, a little of the old shameless swagger in his voice once again, “I want you on top.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track  
> "It's Alright, Ma. I'm Only Bleeding." Bob Dylan  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/itsalrightmaimonlybleeding.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHGrWTmXK6w
> 
> "Flagpole Sitta" Harvey Danger  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/harveydanger/flagpolesitta.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYsMjEeEg4g 


	5. The Underboss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can dress up your wounds  
> With a blood-clotted rag  
> I ain't afraid to make love  
> To a bitch or a hag  
> If you see me comin'  
> And you're standing there  
> Wave your handkerchief  
> In the air  
> I ain't dead yet  
> Ma Bell still rings  
> I keep my fingers crossed  
> Like them early roman kings  
> ~Bob Dylan

Claire is on her knees, though thankfully not in exactly the same way that those women were on their knees in those then-confusing, still-weird photographs that she and William once found in one of David's never-look-in-this-drawers when they were maybe seven and nine. Eight and ten? Something like that. Claire is on her knees and David is beneath her, his chest between her legs, her feet alongside his ears. His penis is staring her in the face, impatiently waiting, almost completely flaccid. The rest of David is impatient too. “Take your time,” he says dryly. “I'm sure no one is wondering what we've been doing in here all this time.”

Claire props on one elbow, reaches out a hand and fondles him, closing her eyes. This, at least, she has done to Alex, though not in exactly this position. But even with her eyes closed, it's hard to imagine that she is really touching Alex. For one thing, Alex has never lain so still in her bed nor risen to less than half-mast to meet the first, slightest brush of her fingers. For another, the man beneath her breathes and sighs and grunts and shifts and fidgets in ways that are indefinably, undeniably unique to David Whele. Someone she had known for almost as long as she can remember without ever once wanting to touch his naked dick, even a tiny little bit. She has always thought of him as a sort of Trinity. The tripartite David is her father's friend-in-war/enemy-in-peace/greed-lusty-fool-to-be-pitied. That's the latest lineup anyway, the terminus of a twenty-five year evolution of perception that started at Big-Funny-Scary. As a unity, he is and has always been William's Father.

Claire's stomach quails a little at the thought of David's rancid seed, the source of her vile husband, spewing inside her. She has to remind herself that she is already safely pregnant and therefore in no danger of conceiving a brother to the Chief of the Black Acolytes. Still, it is a sacrilege. She belongs to the Chosen Savior, and all the good reasons in the world can't make this degradation any less than a complete betrayal of Alex's faith in her. This has to end, but to end it has to start. David's dick is responding a little to the stroke of her hand, but its not enough. She needs to speed things up.

Feeling like she might really vomit, Claire opens her eyes for a moment, dips her head between David's legs and in one swift motion sucks his currently-three-inch-long member into her mouth. It feels like a thick finger in a loose, damp sausage casing and tastes like a sweaty sock. “Oh wow!” David gasps, pleasantly startled. “That's more like it.” And it clearly is. For him. There is an immediate plumping sensation. Claire strives to sustain this delicate progress, sliding her tongue awkwardly against the slimy-feeling flesh in her mouth.

David's laugh is so familiar, so condescending, so grown-up-who-knows-how-silly-this-child-is-being that Claire has the fleeting impulse to bite him as she used to be tempted to do in the days when he only talked to her in that placating way that certain adults use on children and imbeciles. But she didn't bite him then, and she doesn't bite him now. “Slide your whole mouth over it,” he explains, his tone a little too 'patiently instructive' at that, even in husky whispers. “Like your mouth is your cunt and you're fucking me with it.” Claire's resentment is tempered by the fact that David's instructions work well and quickly. When he becomes more than a mouthful, she retreats to sucking the now very plump head of his penis, stroking the shaft with her hands again. “Unbelievable,” David murmurs against her thigh, which in Claire's opinion sums the situation up completely.

~~~~~

There is almost literally no such thing as a bad blow job. Okay, there can be if it becomes a matter of sucking too hard, but Claire isn't doing that. His dick (or at least the better part of it) is in a woman's mouth, and for David, for most any guy, he figures, that is pretty close to the core definition of good. It almost seems a shame to take it out and fuck her. But he knows three or four women who can give him (okay _sell_ him) a better blow than this just about any time he wants. That's not what he's supposed to be doing here. He supposed to be helping Claire with her plausible deniability problems, protecting William, saving all three of their necks, taking up Riesen's slack as defender and champion of the people, and covering his own ass in the process. He has learned by now that when you're naked and hard and in bed with a dangerous ally it is difficult but essential to keep your priorities firmly in mind.

The mission here is to fuck. To come inside her as if the fate of the City depends on knocking her up, as if it offers some measure of redemption or solace or something for killing his son. That's kind of a plot-hole in her narrative, because the logic doesn't really follow there at all, but lives depend on his not pointing that out. Besides, he's finally warming to the idea of fucking her and it would be sort of, well, anticlimactic not to go through with it at this point. Not to mention the unpleasant prospect of proving to both of them that the last remnant of the Whele lineage is made up entirely of pathetic schmucks who aren't up to the challenge of fucking one perfectly presentable woman for better reasons than love or money. William may be a sorry excuse for a son, but that's no reason that David has to out sorry him. Except he's pretty well forked here. Either outcome is something to be ashamed of.

Don't think too much, David has to warn himself again, feeling the growth of his erection stall and falter a little. With a noise between a grunt and growl, seized by a sudden need to take some positive action to avoid thought, he grabs Claire by the hips and pulls her ass slightly backwards, positioning her so that her cunt can be easily lowered to meet his rising mouth as he lifts his head and shoulders from the bed beneath her. Despite the firm downward pressure he is now putting on both hips, she doesn't get the message. When David has raised his head and shoulders to a point that is mildly uncomfortable, he starts to get annoyed again, especially since the dick sucking has basically stopped and she is only holding a little bit of it between her lips. This is too much like real life: positioning himself beneath to Riesen of the City, struggling against the stubborn cluelessness of the person above him to get everything lined up the way he wants it and they both need it, getting nothing but resistance and mistrust for his trouble.

~~~~~

“I'm not a contortionist, Claire,” David scolds her when she stops momentarily to wonder what the hell he is doing and what he wants her to do now.

“Well, _I'm_ not a psychic, David!” she snaps back, letting his penis fall from her lips, and turning around on all fours to stare down at him defiantly. By now it has actually dawned on her that he was trying to reposition her in order to put his mouth on her vagina. To be fair, that makes sense. It's sort of thoughtful even. She too needs to be aroused if she is going to have not-painful sex with him. But Claire doesn't feel much like being fair, and at this point, apparently, neither does David.

“I'm sorry was I so _subtle._ ” he retorts mock-conciliatory like zero calorie syrup. “Have you got some kind of oil or something handy?” he asks the next moment, moderating his tone, still clearly frustrated but no longer mocking. “I need to do this now, or we're going to end up starting over.”

Oil? “I have some hand lotion in the bathroom, I think,” Claire offers, not even trying to hide her puzzlement. On those increasingly rare occasions when she honestly doesn't know what David is getting at, she usually hates to let him know she's missed something, especially if she thinks it might be an issue of inexperience. Normally, Claire would rather spend an hour in her father's—no, _her_ —library looking something up than give David Whele the satisfaction of catching her in ignorance of anything he knows. But she doesn't feel particularly inferior for her lack of experience in working the human body up to loveless, mercenary sex.

“You know?” David says, as he grabs Claire forcefully by both hips and pulls her down to him, as he rolls her over and pins her beneath him with a satisfying thump of the mattress in time with her startled intake of breath, his voice a perfect balance of perturbation, condescension, amusement, hostility, desire and triumph, “I honestly think you deserve this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Early Roman Kings" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/earlyromankings.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8c_DFYolZA  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui8oTApnCYQ 


	6. Bishop Takes Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The line it is drawn  
> The curse it is cast  
> The slow one now  
> Will later be fast  
> As the present now  
> Will later be past  
> The order is  
> Rapidly fadin'  
> And the first one now  
> Will later be last  
> For the times they are a-changin'.  
> ~Bob Dylan

Unless David is mistaken, there is something not altogether unpleasant in the startled sound that Claire makes as he throws her to the mattress and the glint of challenge in her eyes. More what she's used to, he thinks, with a stab of something surprisingly like jealousy, as much self-pity as anger, only a slight aftertaste of contempt. No, David, don't start thinking again. Thinking does not get your enemies fucked or your friends or your allies either. He grabs her wrists and pins them on either side of her head, though she has offered no resistance. He kisses her hard, as if to stop her lips, though she has offered no objection. He invades her mouth with his tongue to such an extent that she could hardly kiss him back if she wanted to, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Releasing her wrists, he grabs her breasts, twisting the nipples harder as her fingers are twisted in his hair, pulling painfully at his scalp in a way that he tries to find inciting rather than just unpleasant. The grunt or moan that Claire makes into his mouth could be an expression of desire or discomfort, and so could be the shifting of her hips.

Seizing this moment of uncertainty, David acts to avert the potential disaster of clarification. Rearing up at the hips and shoulders, taking the incalculable risk of freeing Claire's mouth from his kiss, he thrusts himself at the objective. The head of his penis parts her outer lips and even slightly pokes into her through the thinner, narrower interior labia, which are not quite as closed and dry as he has been lead to expect by her behavior, David notices. But then his shaft collapses against her, unable to bare the weight of his thrust, still only half hard.

Claire bites her lip, but tiny, nearly inaudible, rills of laughter escapes through her nostrils. Her chest is slightly but undeniably shaking with it. For a tenth of a second, David wants to slap her hard in the face, maybe even give her good wrap with his cane, then he too is laughing. Because she is not an impertinent child who ought to show more respect for her elders. She is the Lady of the City and he serves at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Somehow, while Riesen has been fiddling with his epaulettes, a generation has risen and David has become an old man. An old man who is still vital enough, politically at least, to be called upon for a command sexual performance by a beautiful tyrant half his age, but an old man none the less. He will always be a Cardinal, never a king. Well that is nothing but a matter of pride. David has always been good at leading from behind.

“I warned you you'd be getting exactly what you deserved,” he mock-sneers in comiserable amusement at their latest technical difficulty. He is beyond being embarrassed. His position is too absurd. “Hold still,” he instructs her seriously, getting his face straight as she begins to shake even harder with laughter beneath him. “It's not _that_ funny,” he hisses sharply, as he fumbles to get a hold of his dick in one hand and to spread the folds of her labia with the other. “Spread your legs a little wider,” he suggests a scant second later, his voice as even and firm as he needs it to be again, his temper in check. “If I can just get it in, it'll stiffen up some on its own.” Carefully, the way you would stuff a short, frayed rope into a narrow eyelet if you were hoping to get enough of it through to pull out the other side and make a knot, David holds his penis steady with one hand and feeds it into Claire's cunt with the other.

Claire stops laughing the moment David's dick is inside her. Not knowing what to make of her strange expression, not needing the distraction of wondering, he closes his eyes and concentrates on the feeling of flesh snugly fitted together as—as _nature_ self-evidently intended. He holds himself still inside her, concentrating on her snug, warm dampness. When he begins to feel a series of gentle squeezes from her internal musculature and soft hands sliding, hesitantly at first, then more certainly over his body, David feels a surge of gratitude in which resentment at feeling gratitude is a faint and unimportant note.

Her cooperation, her _encouragement,_ does more for him than all the pornography in the world. He gropes and kneads her breasts much more gently than before, kissing and sucking and nibbling at her neck and shoulders. Claire is doing more or less the same thing, running her fingers through the hair on his chest and then gently over the muscles of his back down his sided to his ass as she tugs at the lobes of his ears with her teeth and plants kisses along his jawline. Finally, David tries a few hesitant, experimental strokes and cannot help but groan at the intense pleasure of the sensation of sliding fluidly inside her like a piston in a well-oiled cylinder. He finds her mouth with his and this time their kiss is a mutual, sensual expression of triumph, of shared self-congratulation. This is going to work after all.

~~~~~

Don't think about who it is, Claire enjoins herself firmly, fighting a queasy sense of panic, of dread about something that has already happened and is still happening. This is sex. Sex without context. Context is the enemy. Context has been tripping her up all night. She tries hard to focus on the physical, the immediate. She tries to experience the man who is on top of her and inside of her at this moment, to love the details of his body as if it were a work of art, without wondering when and how a man who is so fond of playing the cripple and so busy giving orders and finding things out, so constantly working with one hand and his brain, finds the time to stay so trim and fit. She tries to appreciate the rhythm and the harmony of the dance they are performing together without wondering what tune he will expect her to dance to next. Sex, sex is a state of being. An act in which two people escape themselves, transcend their everyday lives. It has its own time and space apart from the world of motives and consequences and loyalties.

She shifts her hips into a comfortable position beneath his weight and begins to roll her pelvis against him, trying to match the slightly erratic rhythm of his strokes as they go from long and slow to shallow and frantic before settling into a more sustainable pattern. To match them, she reminds herself, not to critique or control them or imagine ways in which they could be better. They could be faster, for example, she tries not to think. Claire isn't the one who needs to come, says the nagging voice of context. Semen is the point here, or really the idea of semen, the knowledge of it having been spilled at a given time and place, not pleasure. Pleasure is not something a self-made widow has the right to ask of her husband's father.

Context! Context is battering the gates of Claire's fragile dissociative state shaking its stones and rattling its windows even before David breathlessly grunts, “Oh, oh baby, your cunt grips my dick so good. You want it, don't you? You want me to make you come!” Claire's pocket universe pops like a bubble and she is trapped beneath the weight of David Whele, who is grunting and sweating and making smarmy insinuations about her sexual tastes and preferences and what he can do to please her.

“Just do it!” she gasps out impatiently, Letting her head and shoulders fall back against the mattress and drawing in a deeper though not much slower breath. She feels David hesitate, startled, and realizes how close she has come to shouting, how sharp and hostile the memory of her voice sounds. “Just finish,” she whispers, against his skin, trying to make her voice a little more friendly, though throughout all this, his rarely has been. “I'm fine. Just come.”

That draws a harsh chuckle, wounded and contemptuous, but he does what she asks. Gripping her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises, David pounds into her hard and fast five... six... seven... eight more times. “Ah! Fuck!” he chokes out, almost exactly the same way he might if he'd slammed his hand in a door, only quieter. He collapses on top of her for a moment, then quickly rolls off before he is near to catching his breath.

The absence of David discovers Claire's sweat-damp, spreadeagled body to the cool air of the room, making the trickle of semen down her inner thigh feel shockingly cold in contrast to the hot stickiness of the same fluid pooling inside her. She closes her legs and rolls on her side, feeling around for a sheet to cover herself. David hands her one. What she really wants more than anything in the world right now is to shower. That and for David to go away. But as seconds stretch into minutes, he makes no move to get up out of her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "The Times They Are A-Changin'" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/thetimestheyareachangin.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ 


	7. Nausea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief  
> Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief  
> Saying, “Tell me great hero, but please make it brief  
> Is there a hole for me to get sick in?”  
> ~Bob Dylan

David's eyes are closed when he comes into the hot, wet, dark pit of Claire's cunt. He has rarely felt so angry with another human being, so much someone's fool. When he has, in the last two and a half decades anyway, it's usually been Riesen. Not always, but usually. These emotions mar his enjoyment of the physical sensation of orgasm, giving him one more things to resent. _Just do it. I'm fine. Just come._ After kissing him like that, after moving her body against him with such hunger, such passion, such promise of … such a sense of being in this mess together. _Just do it. I'm fine. Just come._ It must be genetic he thinks, this tendency to be his partner in crime as long as he is needed and then to become a high-toned martyr and judge at the very first available opportunity.

David vaguely notices Claire moving around, groping the mattress for a scrap of cloth to cover her nakedness, like Eve scrounging for fig leaves under an 'apple' tree. Smiling, he pulls the sheet from under his own ass and hands it to her. He settles back down onto the bed. He is lying on his back, legs slightly apart, swollen genitals exposed, head resting on his hands, elbows out. David doesn't need any fig leaves. How could he possibly think of covering up when he is contemplating what a beautiful scene this would be for Edward Riesen to walk in on? Maybe it would even give him a heart attack. Now there's a triple X fantasy as far as David Whele is concerned.

Besides, shame is nothing but an invisible shock collar fitted by a hostile deity to keep his pets from whizzing on the carpet and biting the mailman. David defies his conscience to bother him. Tonight he has been put in yet another impossible position, his third in as many days, his thousandth at least in this lifetime. And he has managed, adequately if not quite easily, to do exactly what he needed to do to survive and to protect his own interests. Including saving the scrawny neck of his spiteful, treacherous, ingrate, millstone of a son yet again, just like he's always done. 

Just like he never will be able to again.

People used to say William looked nothing like his parents. They used to assume he was adopted. The truth is, he mostly looks like David's father's family, and David looks like his mother. But that's only mostly. David, who knows where to look, can still find the subtle hints of Eleanor in William's face as he pictures him kneeling by that desert road, defeated, shocked that he isn't being killed. It's all in the little movements of the features as expressions change. Not the smile but the relieved sagging of the frown as it begins to turn upward. Not the color of the iris, but the shape of the eyes, the way the lines around them move and change as worry deepens and lessens. The kind of things photographs rarely capture. Well, that's a hell of a lot of mileage he's gotten out of 'hi, don't you hate this song?' but he's finally seen the last of her. William will never survive in the desert, and Gabriel is clearly done with him.

David feels a sudden chill in the air and reaches down beside the bed to get a blanket that has fallen there. He rolls up in it, turning on his side, facing away from Claire, hugging it tight around him. He can feel her waiting for him to leave. Of course she is. She wants the curtain to fall on her little drama so that she can take a hot shower and change her sheets, ridding herself of his vital fluids, which she never wanted in the first place. Well, and who in her right mind would want to be the mother of David's children? Certainly no one who really knows him. Not as he is now. It's almost an insult that she wouldn't expect him to know that. But she is young, female, beautiful and therefore under the delusion that every man on Earth wants to fuck her so badly that he won't ask too many questions. That delusion plays nicely into David's hand, allowing him to ignore certain obviously problems (like the fact that no educated person would be so completely confident in expecting a thirty-year-old woman to conceive on the first try, no matter what time of the month it is) without arousing her suspicions.

This has been a duel of trickery. They are two mediums conducting a séance without a victim, trying to sucker each other. Of course, Claire is the sucker much more than literally, whatever she thinks, and David knows he ought to take his victory and run. But he's no longer feeling victorious. The séance has gone too well and now the dead won't shut up. He rolls in Claire's direction, but she is facing the other wall. David tries to tell himself not to be mad about that. The last thing he wants to be is angry right now. The last thing he wants to be is alone.

~~~~~

“Claire?” his voice in the dark startles her, partly because it is so close, practically on her neck, but mostly because he sounds so small. So lost. Claire wishes she thought it was a trick. She doesn't. It makes her uncomfortable, this vulnerable, post-coital David, like he's intruding on her space emotionally as well as physically. This was supposed to be a clever trick to pull the wool over the eyes of a dangerous rival and insure his continued cooperation as an ally. It wasn't supposed to leave her stranded with a fragile, needy, victimized old man. She wants her bed back, to curl up in it alone and cry angry tears of humiliation and guilt. But David has lost his son. David has killed his son. Basically on her orders. And she is about to try to convince him that he is still a father after all, to press him into service under the weight of that responsibility. Her scheme seems far crueler in the execution than it ever was in her imagination.

“What is it?” she asks evenly.

“I was just thinking,” he says wistfully. Seriously, David is _wistful._ Claire almost rolls over to face him, but she isn't sure David would want anyone to see him wistful. Instead, she finds herself backing towards him a little, inviting contact. Sure enough, he puts his arm around her. They are almost but not quite spooning, each, as she can now tell, separately wrapped. It's too surreal and Claire once again find herself imagining that this is some alternate reality, some other David.

But as before, he shatters the fantasy in pretty short order. “The first time I met you,” David says, “you were five—well almost five—years old. You were so sweet and so bright. So... uncomplaining in those horrible, dark days when we were still getting eight-ball attacks three or four times a week and William was still crying and shrieking his guts out at everything that moved or held still. And I thought, now why couldn't I get _that_ child. If I had to—”

David stops speaking suddenly as Claire shrugs him off and bolts to her feet. She has felt no more than a second of queasiness. She has had no more than a second of warning, fractionally reduced by the microseconds it takes David to process the fact that her pulling away is more than a shudder of negative emotional reaction and to let her go. Claire runs for her en suit bathroom, knocking David's jacket from the arm of a chair that she almost trips over. She notices but has no time to think about the folded piece of pale yellow construction paper that falls from his jacket pocket. It is only as she falls to her knees and wretches over the toilet that Claire recognizes what she has just seen. David would have stopped at his house of course. Not to shower, evidently, but the freshen up a little. To pull himself together. As Claire pukes her guts out and tries not to worry what he will make of her getting suddenly sick eight months before 'their' child is born 'early', she can't shake the image of David Whele sitting alone in his office having a whiskey or three and staring at the tiny handprints of his three little ducklings.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tombstone Blues" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/tombstone-blues  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6yWZUv9QJA 


	8. Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The foreign sun, it squints upon  
> A bed that is never mine  
> As friends and other strangers  
> From their fates try to resign  
> Leaving men wholly totally free  
> To do anything they wish to do but die  
> And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden.  
> ~Bob Dylan

Urgency and exhaustion, terror and despair. It's a bad combination, a sort of Kamikaze blend of spite and apathy that stands you on the razors edge between 'why bother to get up' and 'fuck it, kill 'em all'. It doesn't last, this nothing matters feeling. Not at this intensity. And the people who give in to 'so what' and let shit happen to them are always sorry. If they live long enough. So, it's your life, that's 'what'. David knows this, but getting his leaden limbs to move or his thundering heart to slow down, that's a different story.

“Whele! WHELE!!!! YOU DUMB CRACKER!”

“Come on, D, there's gonna be more commin'!”

“GET _UP_ MOTHERFUCKER! LET'S _GO_!!!”

“My leg...” David tries to explain, but his voice is impossibly small. He's been shot. There is blood and vomit everywhere. All over his fatigues. All over the body. All. Over. The. Body. The boy hardly looks old enough to shave. David's rifle is right next to him. He could plant it hard in the sand and lean on it to stand up, but he doesn't. Even knowing it has to happen, it doesn't seem worth it.

“Fuckingtowelheadsonofabitch,” Evers, the squad leader mutters, bitter but calm, giving the dead boy a sharp kick before bending down to check David over. “Ah Fuck!” he hisses when he gets a good look. The leg is not an excuse. Not just an excuse anyway. It's not the only wound either. “McGriff, grab some fucking kitty-litter. Tosca, help me get him on the truck. Lean on your other leg, dumb ass. Nobody's gonna carry you.”

Claire is still retching, but that can't last much longer. She's going to be coming back. Lights will be flipped on, casually, like a thing without consequences. David will be trapped where he lays, wrapped in this blanket, unable to get up and get dressed without revealing the mark of Gabriel or at least, acting very suspiciously to keep it covered. She will already be on edge, half-sure he knows the cause of her vomiting. The soldiers obey her, as surely as her father. More so. She has but to say, 'will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest' and it is done. William's swift 'end' proves that well enough. The _Principate;_ bound, hooded, and delivered up to his presumed executioner without question or argument, no thought of a trial.

In the moments between urgent and too late, David frantically dresses, ignoring the sharp, burning pain in his leg and shoulder and the deep, throbbing ache in his back, which happen to be acting up in concert tonight, inflamed by the recent very hard use of his body. He only limps a little as he rushes around the room gathering clothes and getting them on. The truth is, he can almost always manage pretty well without his cane, even if there are times (like now) when it isn't good for him. It hurts, but David is used to pain. In no time, he's fully dressed, except for his jacket and shoes. He resists the urge to put those on. Even the pants are probably too much. He's gotten out of character. He needs to calm down. But to do that, he needs to feel like he can walk out the door if he chooses to.

David is as dressed as he is getting and the buzzer hasn't sounded yet. He needs to do something with the time he has left, something calming and helpful. Something to let Claire know his suspicions are not aroused. He hears the toilet flush, a probably-a-lot-less-than-two-minute warning. He's tempted to have another drink. Calming but not helpful. There is nothing but adrenaline keeping him on his feet now. But one thought leads to another, and to the rudiments of a plan. It's never difficult to convince someone of something they really want to believe, especially if they're not a grizzled, suspicious old bastard like the Consul himself. Soon David is much calmer, and prepared to be very, very helpful.

~~~~~

Claire lied. William is sure of it. In retrospect, he recognizes the seldom seen but long known signs of deceit in her expression. The Tell-tale set of her mouth, the very slight aversion of her gaze. If he hadn't been so upset back at the House, he would have seen it then. Besides, it makes no sense. Why would Gabriel tell Claire that he's an Acolyte? And even if he had some deep, impenetrable reason of his own for wanting her to know, why not then 'Chief Acolyte'? Besides, William thinks as he trudges on through the desert night, beating his hands together to keep his fingers from freezing, she would have said something sooner. _I should have known better than to think I could match wits with Gabriel._ She might have said. _I should have known he was just playing me, making me think he was a fool with that obvious distraction of claiming you were his Chief Acolyte._

No. She had not known. She had only been _almost_ sure, which is not sure at all. Claire had been in a real bind back there, actually, unable to kill him or to let him go, not daring to disgrace herself by accusing him publicly. And William, her good old pal, had helped her out like always. He had signed his own death warrant, had knotted his own noose. _Indicted himself_ , just as his father had said. And his father had been there to pull the rope from around his neck. _You could have implicated me. You could have told Claire that I was involved, but you didn't, because you are loyal. You are strong._

William doesn't know if his father would think him stronger or weaker if he knew that the thought had honestly never crossed his mind. Confused, he tries to imagine why it didn't. It would have been a cruel and dishonest act, of course. That might not be the reason, but it would have been. Deep down, he's known all along that his father is not, nor has he ever been an Acolyte, that he has been pretending, acting, the way he always does when he needs to get around someone with a little power. That' s as far as William has been able to get in his quest to enlighten his farther. He has won just enough respect to merit being manipulated instead of just getting thumped with the cane and told to grow up. And now they'll probably never meet again; a sad end to a sad relationship.

William feels a lump welling up in his throat, but he refuses to give in to tears of self-pity. _Go ahead, cry!_ He can almost hear his father say, _Why start pretending you're a man now?_ _At least have the balls to admit what a sorry little titty-baby you really are! 'Chief Acolyte'! Do you think being Gabriel's best bitch is something to be proud of?_ William does not cry. He tries to tell himself the loss he is not crying for is Claire. Her friendship if not her love. He knows better. Claire was never his friend. She never loved him even in the lower case. All this time, he's been nothing to her but a socially appropriate playmate. The look in her eyes the moment she _suspected_ was nothing but contempt, nothing but hatred. _Don't touch me!_ Death had been her sentence the moment he sprung her trap. No 'say it ain't so', no demands for an explanation, no cursory consideration of banishment, imprisonment or any form of mercy. Nothing but hypocritical indignation. _I held your hand! I prayed with you! I trusted you!..._ with the fruits of my betrayal in my womb, I trusted you to be a useful, uncomplaining sucker with no hopes, no needs, no agenda, and no will of his own. And if not, well then, 'Rosecrantz and Guildenstern goes to it.'

No, there's no love lost there. For the twenty-five years that his mother has been dead the only human being who has ever cared about William Whele at all, even a little bit, is his father. Without him and without Gabriel, he is utterly alone. Of the two, Gabriel is the one who has coddled him, has showered him with praise, has called him 'my son' in a voice that makes it sound like 'my love' and not 'you fool.' And yet his tears, when they finally fall, are not for Gabriel any more than they are for Claire.

William's pain is not pure or strengthening; his tears are not cleansing. They are muddy and dark and poisonous with humiliation. How could it hurt so much to loose the kind of love that spits in your face, that tells you you're useless, that breaks your bones and then makes you go around telling 'funny stories' about how clumsy you are, tripping over your own feet and walking into door knobs? How is it possible to miss, to long for the sheltering embrace of, someone who breaks you, not to make you stronger, but because the world has left him short of things to break that aren't broken already. And because you're the one thing no one can take away from him, the one thing he's stuck with. Someone who despises you as the living embodiment of failure, the consolation prize. Because you're not the one who was _supposed_ to live. Not the one he would have saved if he had had a choice.

Suddenly William stops and smiles up at the desert sky. Because he knows why he has saved his father for once and why, just this once, his father _has_ _chosen_ to save him. Because to choose otherwise would be no choice at all. It would mean letting Claire Riesen win.

~~~~~

“Drink this,” David says without preamble. His voice is gentle but matter-of-fact, not overly solicitous.

“Thanks,” Claire says, cinching up her robe, turning from the sink, water still dripping from her face and taking the glass of ginger ale she finds in his hand. Her gratitude is sincere though not effusive. She is grateful not to be asked if she's alright or told that she will be.

“It'll settle your stomach.” he says instead. “A lot better than the kind I grew up drinking. This actually has ginger in it.”

“I don't know what to say,” Claire starts to apologize, but she really doesn't know what to say next. A lame excuse about something going around sticks in her throat. There is nothing going around and David knows it. He knows everything that goes on in Vega.

David shrugs and favors her with an expression that is somehow both sadly sympathetic and amusedly self-deprecating. “I did the same thing,” he explains, “The first time I killed a man.” Claire drops her eyes, as if she needs to look at her glass, to concentrate on each sip as she takes it. David leans on the counter next to her and keeps right on talking, staving off the threat of awkward silence with something a little heavier than awkwardness. “Puked my guts up all over the body, poor bastard. Of course I made some lame excuse, blamed it on getting shot and on the sun, on the heat but... I suspect the delayed reaction is a function of distance from the actual event, having the horror sneak up on you instead of just hitting you right in the teeth as it happens. Anyway...”

“The first time,” Claire mumbles into her glass, startling herself but not David. Why in the name of The Sav—of anything would she say _that_ to David Whele. She wonders if she is subconsciously sabotaging herself, trying to get this alliance to fail, to be relieved of the burden of it.

“Yes, Claire,” David says seriously, miraculously taking her statement in a way that lets her completely off the hook. “You are the Lady of the City, the dictator—let's be honest here—of a permanently besieged, overcrowded, undersupplied fortress in the heart of an angel infested wasteland. There will be more killing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Gates of Eden" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/gatesofeden.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KQF3r1Owco 


	9. Dirty Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?  
> And what did you see, my darling young one?  
> I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it  
> I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it  
> I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'  
> I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'  
> I saw a white ladder all covered with water  
> I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken  
> I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children  
> And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard  
> It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.  
> ~Bob Dylan

“Even in the best of times, throughout our long but illusory peace, your father and I and the rest of the Senate... well I'm sure you've noticed we average about three official execution a year these days, plus two or three times that in 'security engaged fatalities'. It was a little more in the old days, but... well...” He gives her the old sad-smile here: regret, maybe a little affection, just a hint of dark amusement, not too much, “these days seem to be getting older all the time, don't they?” At least he hopes it's not too much amusement. He only wants his sang froid to unsettle her a little, make her feel glad that the dangerous beast is no her side, not disgust her. “The more informal stuff? It comes in lumps, always has. And life has been very lumpy lately. Now with the war gearing up again...” David puts his hand on Claire's arm, urgently, in a way that make it compulsory to look him in the eye, letting her have a little more of his passion, his frustration with these desperate times. If he's gauged it right, the look in his eyes is fierce, determined, one hundred percent business. Claire looks uncomfortable but resolved. That'll do. He lets her have it. “You and I are going to have an awful lot of killing to do. Starting with running down the surviving Acolytes, and as things stand now, we cannot afford to bring a single one of them to trial.”

“I _know_ that,” Claire says slightly petulantly. She is looking him in the eye with the cold, frank stare of a boss who means business, but the inflection of her voice grates on his ears and put him in mind of a defiant fourteen-year-old. “I know what it means to rule, David,” she says, playing her resentment low-key but not hiding it from him. In a melodramatic, trying-much-too-hard-to-be-calm-but-hard-edged voice she adds, “And I will protect this city. And it's secrets.” In that moment, she seems to him very much like a little girl hip-deep in her father's combat boots.

David is so tired, he could be imagining all this, reading tones and expressions that aren't there, getting his own all wrong. He's aware of that. His face hurts from being modulated. His ego hurts from the awareness that he is too frequently failing to do so and is in danger of blowing the whole charade every second that he says here with her. His whole hellbound body hurts from spending a day and a half driving through the desert and having to push and shove and wrestle with grown people half his age one way and another. “Speaking of which,” he says, at last tumbling to the obvious, seizing on her line about secrets, “I should be getting home.”

“What? Now?” Claire asks, and for a horrible second David fears she will ask him to stay. But no, he can see her reacting to the surprise in his eyes. That wasn't what she meant at all. She was just too tired to expect and properly acknowledge his long awaited offer to leave, and now she's afraid she is screwing it up, that she'll somehow be stuck with him for even longer.

David chuckles, mostly at his own irrational resentment of her desire to be rid of him. “Much as I love a good game of who-has-to-sleep-on-the-wet-spot, Claire,” he drawls out, all irony and condescension now, making her name sound like a mild chastisement, meaning to, “it's knocking on midnight. People _might_ start to talk. And for my taste, _My Lady_ , we already have more than enough of hunting to do.” He's done it now. The look of shock on the dear queen's face as she imagines having to set her coldblooded huntsman upon the innocent servants of her own household to stop their prattling tongues is priceless. 

Satisfied, David strolls out of the bathroom without a backward glance, using all of his self-control to prevent his stroll from crossing the line into a swagger. He is confident that Claire is now thinking of anything and everything except the possibilities that William Whele might still live and that David Whele might need to die. He is feeling mighty pleased with himself, right up to the moment his own snide remark smacks him in the face. “Just one more thing,” he asks, oh so very casually, as Claire enters from the bathroom, anxious to see him out, “what  _are_ you planning to do about the bedsheets?”

~~~~~

For a moment, Claire is frozen. It has always been her experience— No, she corrects herself. It has always been her _presumption_ , that the people whose job it is to change bedsheets also consider it their job to mind their own business. But however true that may be of the intricacies of an unmarried princess's love-life, only a fool would expect it to apply to a newly widowed queen who has spent the evening before her husbands funeral in the sole company of her father-in-law. Especially when there are some few people in the household who _know_ how she has come to be widowed. Claire is not a fool. But she is exhausted and strained, not thinking straight. She's only now beginning to realize to what extent. Thankfully, David is a little more with it. He's more used to this sort of thing she reminds herself wryly. This is not his first conspiracy, after all.

Little tendrils of misgiving creep through Claire's heart. In this moment, David is conspiring _with_ her. He is her patsy even. But he is exactly the person that Machiavelli has in mind when he says to keep your enemies closer. Not that they are enemies... exactly. They are allies. But making sure they are allied in working towards _her_ goals, not just his, will take some doing. Claire is only beginning to realize how much. But she'll have the rest of her life—or his at least—to worry about that. Right now she ought to be worrying about the bedsheets. Maybe he can help with that.

~~~~~

“What do you suggest?” she asks calmly. It seems to be an honest inquiry, not a hint of irony. She has literally given the matter no thought. Which means she probably has never thought of it before. David is mildly disappointed in her. He makes a mental note to find out who has been changing her sheets and to keep tabs on them. If and when the time comes that two and two are put together and the Lannon Affair is connected with the birth of Claire's child, he needs to be in a position to manage that information in whatever direction seems best at that time. But that time has not yet come, and the evils of today are more than sufficient hereto.

“Arika hasn't left for Helena yet,” David points out, but the look on her face is so doubtful, that for an instant he is worried. “Has she?” he asks.

“No,” Claire assures him, looking a tiny bit _more_ puzzled. “She's not flying out until tomorrow afternoon. Why?” Honestly! He is beginning to despair of her leadership potential after all.

“Well,” he prompts, his voice teasing, ironic, “If I was a set of sheets that had just come off her bed, where would I be?”

“Ah.” Claire is chagrined, as she should be, to just now be catching up. “Guest hamper. Hall closet. A floor up and a wing over. There's no way.”

“Where do they go from there?” David asks, making his voice more level, serious, steadying. “Where do that meet up with yours?”

“Basement laundry,” Claire realizes aloud, smiling sheepishly, “via a shoot just like the one ten feet down the hallway next to the linen cupboard where I'm about to get the clean sheets.” Nothing that couldn't be accomplished by momentarily distracting one guard who was under the command of the person distracting him. If Claire couldn't manage that... of course she could.

“There, you see,” David says, feeling a little more relaxed though nowhere near as relaxed as he is pretending to be. “It's usually pretty easy to manage how things look. It just takes some thought and planning, that's all. Now if you'll excuse me,” he adds, flashing her a devilish grin, “I need to go say goodnight to my alibi.”

As David slips on his shoes to go, Claire offers him some polite, cordial parting words, probably friendlier than she thinks he deserves. Replying with a little automatic humor in the ironic vein he knows Claire expects of him, David begins to turn his mind to the delicate task of retrieving his jacket without seeming to notice that piece of paper that had fallen from his pocket and will be lying right in front of him when he bends to get it. He's already decided it is preferable for it to come into her hands accidentally, so that she is only thinking 'poor David' and not 'why are you showing me this?' But as he turns to make one last comment to her so that he can reach sideways and back for the jacket without really looking, the thought of the guards he is envisioning Claire distracting nags at him.

A word to the wise should be enough, but as far as he is concerned, Claire hasn't shown a great deal of wisdom this evening. If he's going to be safe and not sorry, he had better spell this out for her. “I noticed the guards as I came in were the same ones who were here when I...” he has to remember to look suitably regretful here, “left with William. I assume they've been here the whole time?”

“Of course they have,” Claire assures him. “I couldn't have them on the street while everyone in Vega was in the dark and scrambling for information. And the four that actually saw him, I've kept together, on this floor the whole time, and will until they get bumped up to V-3 and scattered to the four winds next week. In fact, I'm keeping every guard in the House on emergency extended duty another three days and then I'm sending them back to their commanders with instructions not to debrief them about anything that's happened since Gabriel came in the gates. Hopefully, it'll just look like investigation security. After all, they have to have heard by now that there were guards answering to—”

Suddenly Claire stops. After a near second of silence, she curses with a fluency that shocks even David. “What?” he demands, hating that it is his turn to be puzzled.

“The Acolytes are the least of our problems,” Claire declares grimly. “We have to purge the Archangel Corps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/ahardrainsagonnafall.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ex-m-eEKsg


	10. Information

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm sitting here thinkin' just how sharp I am.  
> Well I'm sitting here thinkin' just how sharp I am.  
> I'm an under assistant west coast promo man, yeah, yeah.  
> Well I promo groups when they come into town.  
> Well I promo groups when they come into town.  
> Well they laugh at my toupee, they're sure to put me down.  
> Well I'm sitting here thinking just how sharp I am.  
> Yeah I'm sitting here thinking just how sharp I am.  
> I'm a necessary talent behind every rock and roll band.  
> Yeah, I'm sharp, I'm really, really sharp.  
> ~Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

“You can't be here, David.” Arika's tone of gentle but firm reproof is carefully modulated, but in what direction—whether she is exasperated and being polite about it or sympathetic and trying to be stern—he can't guess. Honestly, he doesn't really care. She is ruthless, but circumspect, and he knows how to handle himself with her. “I am the Queen of Helena now,” she reminds him, as if he might have forgotten. David suppresses a smile. Because she is equally aware that power is in flux here in Vega in the wake of Riesen's departure and that his star may be on the rise again. She will not risk offending him to no purpose. And all he needs is to disappear inside her suite long enough to renew the lease on some old gossip.

“Then who will dare to judge the company you keep?” he counters, all smooth charm and bluff confidence. Then, allowing himself to sound a little more vulnerable, as if his true feelings are peaking through the facade, he adds, “Arika, please, just a drink with an old friend?” It works perfectly. Ambitious bitch that she is, Arika cannot resist him rolling over and showing her his belly this way. It has not escaped her attention that he has had a bit to drink already, though not to the point of being sloppy, at least not yet. And she knows that though his tongue does not get as loose as most men's when he drinks, it does loosen up some.

The temptation is too much for her to resist. In moments she is politely inviting him in after all. But she is stern in her warning that they must not wake the priestess in the adjoining room, and when she has shown him to a sofa and poured them each a large brandy, she seats herself on a chair two yards away. David takes her admonition to be quiet seriously and her enforcement of physical separation in good grace. He is getting what he needs just by closing the door behind him. He has no desire to push her boundaries any further. Besides, a pair of queens might be a bit much for one man to juggle, no matter how good his poker face. David's has slipped a bit with Claire this evening, but not badly enough to give his hand away, and Arika will get even less for her trouble. As congenial as her company is, he knows better than to count her as anything less than an enemy. She cannot possibly have any other goal in 'sharing power' with Vega than to work her way around to ruling over it.

They talk of idle things. The smell of orchids and how much better they might smell growing instead of bound in refrigerated corsages, though neither has known them any other way. The joy of damp salt air. The summers he used to fish with his grandfather off the Florida Gulf Coast. What it is like to miss the water, with or without the salt. The fearsomeness of the last days of Detroit as seen through the eyes of a child from Cashmere. The inconstancy and certainty of the passage of time; sliding, leaping, crawling, but always forward. They do not discuss the loss of her wife or of his son.

Between the brandy and the fire, soon David and Arika are both very sleepy. When David is nearly dozing, his eyelids heavy, his chin drooping towards his chest, Arika yawns and stretches herself like a great cat then languidly inquires, “I assume that the... departure of General Riesen will not delay the completion of our secret weapon?”

~~~~~

The sun is rising over the mile high peaks of the Rockies when Gabriel reaches his eyrie and delivers his half-conscious captive into the hands of his minions to be unceremoniously consigned to a dungeon sunk far into the depths of the mountain. Alex Lannon is waiting for him. The child is stonefaced, sitting in his anteroom like a patient visitor. His anger is controlled, but not concealed. He holds a beer but doesn't drink from it, some silly eightball's idea of hospitality. It is explained in low tones as Gabriel takes his throne and prepares to receive him that the fool has climbed there, straight up the sheer face of the mountain, expecting to act as a one man invasion, to confront Gabriel, possibly to kill him, though he has been tight lipped about his exact intentions. Being compelled to wait, _comfortably_ , no less, has probably been something of an anticlimax for the poor dear.

Two higher angels usher the young man in, but without touching him. He has been relieved of his arms but not his armor. Alex scowls around the Throne Room as if he finds it offensive somehow. “Forgive the mess,” Gabriel says mockingly. “I really wasn't expecting you so soon. I thought you'd need a few days to help dear Claire pick up the pieces of her toy empire after my brother's little temper tantrum.” The fierce, wounded look on the youngster's face tells Gabriel all he needs to know about the state of that set of relationships. “Well, perhaps she had all the help she needed,” he needles the boy. Mostly, he is just being impish. Gabriel is comfortable enough with himself to admit that. But he is also extremely pleased to know that his Chief Acolyte had acted so swiftly and competently to cement his position in the Lady's household. He is sure to remain her consort only, never her Lord; but still, even in that capacity, he should be highly useful.

“Leave Claire out of this,” Alex all but barks, unable to swallow his pride, having to chew on it instead. “This is between us. Just the two of us. You and me.”

“Really?” Gabriel drawls. “The apocalypse is between us? Just the two of us, you and me? The millions of men and angels whose lives hang in the balance have nothing to do with it? That's a bit egocentric of us, don't you think?”

~~~~~

When David wakes, it takes him a minute to figure out where he is and why. Not that he has much of a reason why, except that this is where he finally got too tired to care about going to bed. He is curled on his side on the couch in his 'sitting room.' An opulent, semi-formal den/breakfast/family room. A usage of space unheard of in his former life; the center of his family life in Vega. The place where he and his son have shared their years of stilted affection, quiet contempt, sporadic terror, and deep mutual loneliness. David has brand new secrets this morning. Secrets that ought to be delicious on his tongue and leaping eagerly to be spilled into Claire Riesen's ears. But the cold light of _this_ day filtering into _this_ room makes the whole world taste of ashes. Nothing is delicious anymore.

David's joints are stiff and his tongue is coated. Gossip can wait. William's 'funeral' is in two hours. David has to decide how to play it. There's no sense falling apart for Claire's benefit, not after the way he presented himself last night, all calmly regretful and stuffed with quasi-fatherly advice on swallowing your feelings and doing what has to be done. Well, mostly he'd presented himself that way. There may have been a moment or two of maudlin nostalgia. But there's no need for that today. Indispensable Sons-of-Bitches don't cry at traitor's funerals, he decides. They don't have emotional breakdowns. He'll have to wear a heavyhearted look for the sake of the peanut gallery, but frankly he finds that coming on a little too naturally anyway. There wouldn't be any point weighing his soul against a feather today, that's for sure.

It might not hurt for Claire to have a bit of a cry today, he muses. As long as she doesn't over do it. But if she does, all the more reason for David to be stoic, to be seen as a force of strength and stability. Regardless, he's not about to tell her her business in a matter as individual as mourning appropriately. The worst thing a person can do in these situation is to overact, to give an unconvincing performance. Considering how she really feels about William, frozen to steal might be the only brand of grief she can portray with any degree of authenticity. As Lady of the City, in these frightful times, it might be her best play anyway. David smiles at the thought, despite his genuinely heavy heart, remembering six-year-old Claire's performance at the first Jubilee.

Riesen is pissed when he hears the changes to the lyrics, especially the verse about the Christmas tree, but David is right and he knows it. By the time she hit's “rise like the break of dawn” there's not a dry eye in the house, especially not Riesen's. This song, exactly this song, every defiant word, every passionate note of conviction in her small but certain voice, has captured the spirit of the moment, and it is solid propaganda gold. These people don't want to hear any more about the pale, distant hope of Saviorism, not yet. Everything is still too real, too raw, too broken. What the people of Vega crave is the kind of hope they can honestly credit, hope that somehow, even though everything is exactly as bad as they know it is, it will still be okay, that they can make it okay, here and now. Claire gives them that hope, and they instantly love her for it. Of course, as David well knows, nobody sells hope like a true believer, and pound for pound you can't beat the faith of a little child.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man" Jagger & Richards  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rollingstones/theunderassistantwestcoastpromotionman.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIfjozLGueU 
> 
> "Let It Go" Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez  
>  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/idinamenzel/letitgo.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk 
> 
> “Let It Go” Lyrics adapted by David Whele. 
> 
> The sand glows white on the desert tonight  
> Not a footprint to be seen  
> A city in isolation,  
> Hears the sound of beating wings.
> 
> My heart is howling like this swirling storm outside  
> I can't keep it in, and you know I've tried!
> 
> We kept your Laws, we trimmed your tree  
> We let you tell us what we had to be  
> Your frozen heart, we couldn't know  
> Well, now they know! 
> 
> Let it go, let it go  
> Can't hold it back anymore  
> Let it go, let it go  
> You turned away and slammed the door!  
>  
> 
> We don't care  
> What your angels say  
> Let this storm rage on,  
> The cold never bothered me anyway!
> 
> It's funny how some distance  
> Makes everything seem small  
> And the fears that once controlled us  
> Can't get to us at all!
> 
> It's time to see what we can do  
> To test the limits and break through  
> No shame, no fear, no guilt for me; I'm free!
> 
> Let it go, let it go  
> I am one with the wind and sky  
> Let it go, let it go  
> You'll never see me cry!
> 
> Here we stand  
> And here we'll stay  
> Let the storm rage on!
> 
> Our spirit flourishes and here, we stand our ground  
> Your wrath is spiraling in frozen fractals all around  
> And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast  
> We're never going back,  
> The past is in the past!
> 
> Let it go, let it go  
> And We'll rise like the break of dawn  
> Let it go, let it go  
> Your perfect world is gone!
> 
> Here we stand  
> In the light of day  
> Let the war rage on,  
> The cold never bothered me anyway!


	11. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door it opened slowly,  
> my father he came in,  
> I was nine years old.  
> And he stood so tall above me,  
> his blue eyes they were shining  
> and his voice was very cold.  
> He said, "I've had a vision  
> and you know I'm strong and holy,  
> I must do what I've been told."  
> So he started up the mountain,  
> I was running, he was walking,  
> and his axe was made of gold.  
> Well, the trees they got much smaller,  
> the lake a lady's mirror,  
> we stopped to drink some wine.  
> Then he threw the bottle over.  
> Broke a minute later  
> and he put his hand on mine.  
> Thought I saw an eagle  
> but it might have been a vulture,  
> I never could decide.  
> Then my father built an altar,  
> he looked once behind his shoulder,  
> he knew I would not hide.  
> ~Leonard Cohen

David watches the fire burn with tears in his eyes. The fidgeting, noisily hushed congregation around him is reduced to a vague buzz at the edge of his senses. His field of vision narrows to nothing but the flames and the figure burning within, one of dozens he has consigned to this fiery fate. He squints and swears he can still see a hint of a smile on the blackened, shriveling face of his victim. The tears in his eyes begin to fall. He is doing all that he can to stop them, but it's no use. His partner in crime squeezes his hand. Young as she is, barely half his age, she understands him, and he is immensely grateful for her understanding. Grateful, but also guilty for this undeserved compassion. It overwhelms him, and he lets one unmanly sob escape though he has no right to such self indulgence. The loss is as much hers to mourn as his after all, officially anyway. Nonetheless, she throws her arms around him and clings to him for a long moment, letting her own tears fall at last. Not physically, but emotionally, she holds him up, holds him together until he is strong enough to stand again. The embrace lasts only a moment, but she never lets go of his hand.

“Hell!” the preacher declares, dropping another paper doll into the flames. “Who here thinks that they are going to Hell? Because I'll tell you right now, if a tornado came today and blew this church away, a whole lot of you kids would be surprised to find yourselves in Hell! Oh no, you think, Hell, that's only for really bad people. I bet when you picture Hell, you imagine the harlots, you imagine the Pharisees, the murderers, abortionist, drug dealers all rollin' in the flames writhing and screaming. Sounds pretty right doesn't it? They've got it coming don't they? Well let me tell you something!” He grabs a rosy cheeked little two-dimensional girl and tosses her onto the pyre on top of the charred remains of her parents. “Half the population of Hell is under twelve years old! And more of them than you think go to church every Sunday!

“And I can here you say, but Brother Billy, my mom says God wouldn't let me go to Hell cause I'm just a kid. Even if I do bad things, if I lie, if I steal, if I disobey my parents...” David feels his father's gaze like a laser but he still never takes his eyes off the flames. “...it doesn't really count, it's not really sin, because I haven't reached 'the age of understanding'. I don't need to be 'Saved' at eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years old, Brother Billy, I'm still 'Safe', right? Wrong! If you're thinking that way, kids you're just about as wrong as you can be! That right there, making excuses, trying to justify doin' what you know is wrong, that's sin and more than that, it's sin that knows it's sinnin'.

“The Bible says Adam and eve were naked and they were not a shamed! Amen? If you know enough to know you're doing wrong, then you have reached the age of understanding. Your not 'Safe', you've got to be Saved! If your old enough to make an excuse there ain't no excuse for you, you don't need to be excused, you need to be Justified, Amen? For there is no man righteous, no not one. You've gotta be washed in the Blood! Amen? If you're lyin' and you know your lyin', if you're cussin' and you know you're cussin', if you're jealous about what somebody else has, what somebody else is, you can't be happy with what you've got, you've gotta have what your sister has!”

Those word sting David like a belt across the back, but he squares his shoulders and sucks down the last of his tears. For Shelly, whose chubby three-year-old fingers are still clasped tight in his bigger, stronger hand and who doesn't deserve what they're both going to get if they're still crying when children's church is over. “If that's you, you don't need excuses, you need Jesus! Amen?”

“Amen!” Shelly cries, with shocking passion. And all the children say, “Amen!”

~~~~~

“Alright!” young Alex demands dramatically. He's so adorable, Gabriel could just lap him up, like a puppy. “No more games. No more lies. No more stalling. I listened to your spiel. I ate your food, drank you wine, let you talk my ear off until dawn about how you slaughtered 99% of humanity for our own good, now you have to answer my one, very simple question. Where's Noma!?!”

The archangel smiles beatifically. “Safe,” he says, coolly mischievous. Alex's lunge for his throat is so expected, so predictable, that Gabriel is able to send him sprawling with the flick of a wing and kick him across the throne room before he even figures out that he is on the floor. “Alex, Alex,” he chides sweetly. “Such aggression. What _has_ my brother been teaching you? Tell me, did he try to beat his 'virtues' into you?” Alex dips his head slightly, ashamed. If he doesn't fully understand why, Gabriel does.

“My word as my bond,” the archangel assures him, smooth as a snake sliding across silk sheets, “your lover is safe. Well, both of them are, actually. And they will stay that way. As long as you stay here with me and freely give me the same chance to guide and inform you that you were coerced and manipulated into giving my brother.”

“This is your idea of playing nice?” Alex asks with mild, almost friendly skepticism and what is probably supposed to be an ironically cocked eyebrow. “Threatening the people I care about?” He is softening already. In fact, he's hardly angry enough for Gabriel's purposes.

“Your father abandoned you so that you would have no choice but to cling to Michael for protection, do you realize that?” Gabriel demands, shoving his nose in the stinking pile of shit that is the truth of his sorry existence. "Jeep put his faith in him to be your guide, your teacher, to make you worthy to be the Chosen One. So much faith that he left his only son to live and die a holy, miserable sacrifice. A tool. An instrument. A 'Savior' to make the world safe for humanity again. But who's looking out for you, Alex? Who keeps the Savior safe?”

“I don't need to be safe!” the boy declares with yet more precious gallantry, trying his best to sound firm and fiery, rather than frightened and petulant. “I just need to know what it's going to take to get you angels to leave my people the hell alone!”

~~~~~

“Amen,” David mumbles. Claire looks at him sidelong, trying to hide her shock and skepticism. A single tear runs down his check, but he makes no move to dry it. Doesn't even notice it, apparently. Claire doesn't know what to think. He's just been standing there like a chunk of granite through the whole service. Within reason, she supposes, she should have known that something had to be going on inside his head, especially after that bombshell (no pun intended) that he dropped in her ear under cover of a supportive prefuneral hug.

But of all the possibilities, she never in a million years would have guessed that he might be praying, about the war or anything else. She squeezes his hand a little tighter—which feels appropriate—and wonders for the first time when their hands found each other to begin with. But that hardly matters right now. He squeezes back and the pressure is oddly comforting if also a little guilty-making. It is good to have someone to share her secrets as well as her grief. For a moment she feels a little less alone, a little like she might still be part of a family even if it is a very sad and very strange one.

That moment can't last, of course, and on the limousine ride into the desert for the scattering David destroys it spectacularly. “You were perfect,” he says with a wicked glint in his eye if not quite a smile. Claire feels both anger and relief. Even she has been taken in by his simulated mourning, even knowing that he has already mourned, knowing that the ashes they are about to scatter are those of a man who has been nothing to either of them, just another Acolyte who has received his just reward for his devotion to Gabriel. But the secret glee with which he celebrates their successful joint pretense is not the worst of it. After a dozen minutes and no more than a dozen words he says, almost gravely, “I don't think I should come to you tonight. You should come to my place, returning the visit. That'll probably look a little less suspicious. Earlier's, probably better too. Maybe late afternoon. You should probably stay for dinner and then go home.”

Finally, Claire has to stop him. “David,” she asks, with genuine annoyance and feigned puzzlement, “what on earth are you talking about?”

He gives her a look that makes her feel stupid for even offering the 'I must have misunderstood you' out. It is not a politely playing along look, but a disapproving look, disappointed that she has missed some obvious reason why his presumption that they are about to have yet more sex makes perfect sense. “I'm sorry, Claire,” he says, feigning incomprehension himself with deep, dark, sharp-edged irony. “I though you told me last night that the fate of the City depends on me getting you pregnant.” His dry chuckle gives Claire goosebumps for all the wrong and not at all sexy reasons. For a moment, she sees a glimpse of the David Whele everyone else is still as frightened of as she was at six or seven, the David who might feed you to the lions if you misbehave. “Not that I'm doubting that we did the job right the first time, or” the viciousness of his smirk turns briefly inward, “that we got the job done, anyway. But considering what's at stake, don't you think we'd better hedge our bets as much as we can, just to be safe.”

Deep in her guts Claire has a cold, ugly, gnawing notion, one that she can neither believe nor dismiss. He knows. David know that she is carrying Alex's child. He is only going along with her charade to punish her or because he thinks fucking Riesen's daughter the minute she's been left to handle him on her own, is some kind of grand joke, some secret triumph. Or maybe he just wants her to believe she has him fooled so that she won't have a motive for tossing him out of the inner circle when she still needs him to handle so very many details. Of course, if that is the case, he should be as eager as she is for this dance to end so that they can get back to the business of running Vega as the best of enemies and the worst of friends, as he has always done with her father. Of course, it could be as simple as the fact that Claire is, at least from David's perspective, somewhat better looking than her father. A grand joke, a secret triumph, and a bit of perfectly good sex with a good-looking woman half his age?

He doesn't know. She is sure of it. David is too careful, too smart to risk making such a powerful enemy, even for things he loves as much as irony, winning, and sex. But he will know, she realizes, if she asserts her inexplicable confidence that one encounter is enough to guarantee conception. For a moment she considers bluffing him, telling him that sex the day after ovulation is one hundred percent clinically too late to do any good. But she doubts very much if that is true and for all she knows he might know for certain—he's done this for real after all—or he might be inclined to look it up. She can't risk it.

And if he actually does know, he knows that too. The notion gnaws at her. She can see the way in which he might be besting her but even if he is, she has no better option but to let him do it, fork you very much. She can neither safely assume that he knows or that he doesn't know. General Riesen, Claire thinks, would never have this kind of problem. If he needed to know something this badly, somehow, he would be able to figure it out.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "The Story of Isaac" Leonard Cohen  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/storyofisaac.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UeQPAjpqfk


	12. Until Father Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freeways flickering, cell phones chiming a tune  
> We're riding to utopia, road map says we'll be arriving soon  
> Captains of the old order clinging to the reins  
> Assuring us these aches inside are only growing pains  
> But it's a long road out of Eden.  
> ~The Eagles

“The last of the 3s and 4s were 'sequestered' this morning,” Claire changes the subject abruptly, watching David's eyes unsubtly. He can feel her feeling him out. It is tiring but expected, both that a part of her must be wondering if he knows and that she doesn't want to draw attention to that fact. He lets her have it her way for the time being, following her lead into a discussion of the 'Administrative Dissolution' of the Archangel Corps approved in executive session this morning after having gotten underway last night.

“I've accounted for most of the 2s already,” he offers, for his part. “The Lion's Head Regiment are tracking down the rest. We should have the results of our first round of 'performance reviews' by this afternoon, then we can start on the 'placement interviews'.”

“Well,” Claire says with a resigned, miserable sigh, “At least that will give us an excuse for a long closed-door meeting, so we should be able to get that over with without having to make a dinner party out of it.”

“Careful, you might flatter me to death,” David rejoins. It's supposed to sound wryly amused, but it comes out sharp, acerbic, almost petulant. He closes his eyes to avoid the sight of her being annoyed and slightly embarrassed for him. He is not supposed to care that she wants his cock almost as much as a dentist's drill. He rubs his temples as a thin excuse for closing his eyes, not that his head doesn't ache. After five hours of couch time and one very long morning, he is neither as bone weary nor as wired as he was after nearly two full calendar days without a wink of sleep. Now he's just yawning, needs-a-nap sleepy and too busy to do anything about it. That and a little hungover to be honest. All of which makes it especially vexing to have to be constantly on his guard with Claire. That doesn't leave him a lot of good humor for patiently enduring insults to his performance as an interim lover while The Great Alex Lannon is away.

When David opens his eyes, Claire has corrected her expression. It is grim and business-like. Hopefully, his is the same. They discuss The Purge a bit more, fleshing out criteria for who should be reassigned as advertised (and watched very carefully, of course) versus Dealt With Accordingly. “Anyone whose been behaving suspiciously,” Claire agrees, “or who can't make a reasonable account of their time and their movements. And anyone whose been too close to Michael.”

“That'll be most of the 3s and both of the 4s,” David points out, “though some of them can be retired and watched for the time being. In fact, they'll have to be. The only way to justify executing them en masse would be to suggest that Michael is in league with Gabriel, and that really would spark a civil war.” Neither of them has to be reminded how close the news of Rebecca Thorn's murder has come to doing exactly that.

“We'll flag the more obvious cases as the reviews progress and have them sequestered rather than summoned for their interviews,” Claire decides. “There shouldn't be much danger in accusing any V-2's we need to of working for Gabriel, especially if we use summary process to limit their public exposure.” David cannot entirely suppress a smile. Claire's don't-look-at-me-like-that look warns him not to twist the knife by pointing out what a stroke of luck it is that a certain Consul has managed to keep her beloved “Bill of Rights” tied up in committee and thus tabled along with all 'pending non-emergency legislation' for the duration of the present crisis. As with her father, David doesn't need to say that he will arrange for a reasonable selection of the accused to confess and implicate the others. How easily she is stepping into her roll, as though she has been ready for some time.

There are nods of agreement. A pause stretches into a silence. Claire gazes dispassionately out at the desert. David thinks of his father's funeral procession. Eleanor's face turned to the window just so. Saying nothing because there is nothing to say, when you're not sorry to see someone go. Especially to someone who is. “You haven't asked me,” Claire says at last, still looking out the window, “where Alex Lannon is.”

David takes a moment to decide how to respond, wishing she'd let that sleeping dog lie a little longer. Still, with the AC being rounded up and examined, it had to be mentioned eventually. “I figured my guess was as good as yours,” he says neutrally. He tries not to show awareness of her coil spring tension. “My guess, by the way, is that he's followed Michael somewhere after all, still looking for the magic decoder ring.”

“He hasn't” Claire replies, turning from the window but lowering her gaze. Still not meeting his eyes. “According to a source in the Archangel Corps, he's gone looking for Gabriel. What he plans to do when he finds him...”

 _According to a source._ That won't do. They are supposed to be more or less partners even if she is the acknowledged superior of the two. David presses and gets the name. Ethan Mack. But she is reluctant to agree that his 'placement interview' should be expedited and handled by David personally. It could be just a pang of conscience at betraying her lover by endangering his friend's life. Or it could be that Ethan Mack holds secrets Claire cannot afford for him to know. If so, he cannot afford to have interviewed the boy and therefore be suspected of knowing them. He lets her assertion that the man is harmless and seems loyal stand for now. He will have to create another opportunity for Mack to be Dealt With Accordingly, and soon. On the plus side, it seams as though Gabriel is about to save Vega the trouble of having to crucify Alex Lannon.

~~~~~

Uriel and her consort are veiled in deep purple. They pretend to be weighed down with the solemnity of the occasion of a bit of ash and dust being blown away on the desert wind in a ridiculous dumb show of shallow grief and counterfeit respect. Evelyn squeezes her hand and catches her eye, letting her glimpse a glint of amusement at the farcically formal send off of one of her brother's silly minions. Poor Sweet Evelyn. It is written all over her face, the smugly innocent belief that she herself is something more.

~~~~~

A shower. A hot one. That is what Claire needs. Her face hurts from making her Bravely Determined face all day, and lunch with Arika and Laurel has been a special torment. Trying to appear warm and excited about their invitation to visit Helena next month without breaking her mourning pose, assuring them that 'that other little project' is 'still coming along' without saying anything definite enough to contradict any details they may have already been told, has been a maddening balancing act. Thanks be to David Whele that she's gotten enough of a heads up to be able to do even that. How could her father have promised these women, these foreigners, something so concrete and then just walked away without giving her a clue?

Admittedly, he had expected them to be departing days earlier, not staying for William's as yet undreampt of funeral. And he had probably started negotiating this (whatever it was) with Arika before his only child had announce her intentions to mercilessly depose him, Claire reflected guiltily. But still, why promise them something in weeks that David's people were years at best from being able to deliver? And behind David's back, no less. Unless— As Claire stands beneath the steaming spray, there is a convergence of 'unlesses'. General Reisen would not conceal his political strategy from both Consul Whele and his heir apparent unless he had confided instead in Consul Thorn. And there was no scientist in Vega who might be close to understanding how to make a nuclear weapon... unless it was Becca. But to do that, without alerting Whele, Claire now realizes, she would have needed a very unofficial source of some fairly rare raw materials. They would have to be brought in by someone who could avoid or even defy inspection.

Claire's heart almost literally skips a beat. Her hand is shaking as she turns off the water. Toweling off quickly she pulls her thick robe around her and reaches for her hand-held. She almost puts a call through to David's private secure channel. Her first hesitation is that there may be no channel 'secure' enough for this conversation, especially not when it is only a matter of waiting another couple of hours to speak with him in person. That is her first, but not her greatest hesitation. Claire's stomach is tight with excitement, relief, resentment and dread. Her father hasn't just disappeared in a fit of suicidal pique. He has a plan. A plan that will probably never work now. A plan he has not deigned to share with her, but a plan nonetheless. Which means he is coming back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Long Road Out of Eden" Henley, Schmit &Frey (The Eagles)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/longroadoutofeden.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MQbwMdUMx4  
> 


	13. "I Adjust"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take a straight and stronger course  
> to the corner of your life  
> Make the white queen run so fast  
> she hasn't got time to make you a wife
> 
> 'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time  
> and its news is captured  
> for the queen to use!  
> Move me on to any black square  
> Use me anytime you want  
> Just remember that the goal  
> Is for us all to capture only one.
> 
> Don't surround yourself with yourself  
> Move on back two squares  
> Send an instant karma to me  
> Initial it with loving care.
> 
> ~ Jon Anderson and Chris Squire (Yes)

_“♫Jesus is coming soon!♪_

_“♫Morning or night, or noon!♪_

_“♫Many will meet their Doom!♪_

_“♫Trumpets will sound!♪”_

“How is he?” David asks anxiously as he takes off his hat and gloves, though the loud and toneless singing is somewhat of an answer in itself.

“Oh, you know your father,” Mom answers taking his coat and other things to put in a closet where they belong. Clutter is the enemy and must be prevented at all costs. Her tone, like her expression, is vague and falsely cheerful, as empty as her words.

 _“_ _♫_ _All of the Dead shall rise!_ _♪_

_“♫Righteous meet in the skies!♪”_

“He's doing a little better with the morphine pump,” Shelly explains quietly when Mom can plausibly claim to be out of earshot. “But it won't be much longer now.”

 _“_ _♫_ _Going where no one dies!_ _♪_ _”_

“Eleanor felt she needed to be with the children,” David explains. Shelly give him a look, for all the same reasons that she never would have asked where Eleanor was.

 _“_ _♫_ _Heavenward bound!_ _♪_ _”_

“Consul?” that idiot Broadenax repeats worriedly, “are you alright?” Meaning 'why aren't you listening to me', of course. With a side of 'you rank me so much I'm afraid to be annoyed that you're not listening to me'.

“Run that last bit by me one more time, Paul?” David says, smiling benignly at the irritating little bastard. He's memorized all of their names now. He speaks to them a bit differently. Lesson learned. One he used to know actually, before the war. One of a few things he'd forgotten that are worth remembering. Politics, like charity, begins at home.

“The name for the new worship facility,” Brother Paul Broadenax repeats, “do you prefer the William Whele Memorial Tabernacle or Holy Principate Memorial Tabernacle?”

“Oh... definitely Holy Principate,” David assures him. “Or better still Holy Savior. My son was such a humble, pious man; I'm sure he'd prefer a name that calls attention to The Faith rather than to himself.” The fool keeps rattling on about the details of his building project, and David listens just enough to agree along where appropriate. That they are building the damn thing at all is bad enough, but he's hardly in a position to say so. At least his House will be able to supply the building materials, and the engineering services at the standard going rates. Which are bound to increase without House Frost to put in a bid. Under the circumstances, it would be an insult to ask that House Whele _donate_ any goods or services to the construction, though he'll be into a Founding Gift once the blamed thing opens up, David supposes. Well, omelets and eggs and all that.

While he's listening to all this, David has to school his hand to quit patting his pocket for his hand-held, which is (of course) still there and (of course) still not ringing yet. He grips his cane to help with that. _Like a tiger by the head_ , he thinks vaguely, though the silver tip on this particular cane is supposed to be in the shape of a lion's head, not that one in three people in this City knows the difference anymore. 'The past is like another country', Brother Billy used to say. Today, David feels like an alien. Then again, he smiles to himself, so was Kissinger.

~~~~~

She ought to return the hand prints, Claire decides. She can't stand having them and it wouldn't be right to throw them away or burn them in her fireplace. Besides, she could never explain having done that in the highly likely event that David figures out where he's bound to have lost them. She puts them in her purse, and after a moment's hesitation, takes his wife's sapphire necklace from her jewelry case, meaning to return that as well. 'Something Borrowed' he had said; 'wear it' not 'keep it'. Under the circumstances, it seems both inappropriate and presumptuous that she still has it, implying all the wrong things. Especially given this afternoon's turn of events.

On the other hand, she realizes, an instant shy of dropping the necklace into her handbag, the act of returning it could also be invested with erroneous and dangerous symbolism if she isn't very careful how she does it. Especially given this afternoon's turn of events. Her 'closed door meeting' with David might not be the right time, particularly since it is the last time they are planning to meet this way. Perhaps on a less fraught occasion it will feel less like 'breaking things off', which cannot help but be better for their alliance. Of course, not 'breaking things off' at all would probably be even better for that alliance, Claire thinks ruefully, if it wasn't for her resentment and disgust.

Claire contemplates the gem a while, sparkling in its silver setting, dangling from its silver chain. She tries to imagine the woman it belonged to, the woman who chose to marry David Whele, who _wanted_ to bear his children. He must have been different then, is all she can think. But then again, everyone was, before the war. There is not one person over the age of twenty-seven in the whole City of Vega who has not had their soul broken and healed without a cast. It's only a wonder that everyone's deeds aren't more hideously misshapen than they are. A wonder there is a Lady of the City and not a Lord of the Flies to rule this bleak patch of desert. Not that that distinction matters very much if you're the one who gets fed to the lion.

Claire shivers. Maybe she will give David back his necklace sooner rather than later. Maybe that is the message that she wants to send after all, that their alliance is exactly that. And that she _is_ the Lady of the City, no master and only one mistress. He could stand to be reined in a little, at least where humans are concerned, to be set new rules than he had under her father. There will be more angels to kill soon enough. Angels and angel worshipers. Would a lion eat an angel, she wonders. Sampson is dead, of course, but there are three lionesses, and with any luck, soon there will be cubs.

The necklace glitters in the light of Claire's alter candles, almost hypnotically. She swings it back and forth, turns it over and over. As if scrying for a spirit guide, the way the children do now with glass and plastic baubles, hung from bits of string. Claire smiles ironically at her own silliness. Any suggestions for handling your husband, Eleanor? Assuming you don't mind sharing them with the woman who killed your son. What do you say, Dear? Any motherly advice?

It is only now that Claire notices the writing; an inscription in neat, tiny, flowing script scored into the silver backing. She moves away from her home alter and holds the necklace under the brighter light of her bedside lamp, to get a better look. It reads: _Something Blue, besides me, because I am truly happy for you. Keep Christ in your heart always. Love, Dad._

Before Claire has quite decided what she thinks of that, her hand-held rings. Her pulse quickens with anticipation, but it is not the call she's been expecting. Nothing to do with the Inventory of House Thorn. A bold new faction of very strange bedfellows has raised a quorum to call an emergency Senate Meeting. In the name of Justice, Equality and the Welfare of the Lower Vs.

~~~~~

When the phone finally rings David is pleased with his expressions of surprise and with the reactions of the dupe he has chosen to witness them. An emergency Senate meeting. One that could last all afternoon, into the night, superceding his meeting with Claire. What a shame. And called by such persons and under such circumstances as to suggest some division within the Senate, some threat to the supremacy of House Riesen that Claire will be needing his help to deal with. Romero, Graywell, and Young Ms. Frost. How far the Acorn has fallen from the tree! And with the food supply for all of Vega at stake. Alarming indeed. How fortunate that he is here.

“If you'll excuse me,” Whele says at last, as if only just remembering that Broadenax is present. The young priest politely bows out of the room to allow the Consul to finish his obviously very sensitive conversation in privacy. Within minutes the City is buzzing with the news that Emily Frost, shame that she is to her noble father's memory, is trying to use her House's Guardianship of the agritowers as leverage to gain power at the expense of House Riesen during this period of crisis and transition and perhaps also to make a large amount of money off the Lower Vs or else see them starve, just when Vega seems poised on the brink of eliminating hunger. But worst of all is the sad truth that she and her cronies would try to practice upon what they assume to be the weakness and ignorance of the Lower Vs to employ them as a mob against their own interests. Honestly, some people have no decency at all. No shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "All Good People/Your Move" (Yes)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/yes/iveseenallgoodpeople.html  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Seen_All_Good_People  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYU_mWlLyY 
> 
> "Jesus Is Coming Soon" Robert E. Winsett  
> http://lyrics.astraweb.com/display/643/hymns..unknown..jesus_is_coming_soon.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qpo35zSs_4  
> http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/w/i/n/winsett_re.htm


	14. Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Program Activities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Show me how to lie  
> You’re getting better all the time  
> And turning all against the one  
> Is an art that’s hard to teach  
> Another clever word  
> Sets off an unsuspecting herd  
> And as you step back into line  
> A mob jumps to their feet.
> 
> Now dance, fucker, dance  
> Man, he never had a chance  
> And no one even knew  
> It was really only you
> 
> And now you steal away  
> Take him out today  
> Nice work you did  
> You’re gonna go far, kid!
> 
> ~Dexter Holland (The Offspring)

As he is being driven the few blocks to the Senate Chamber, David Whele receives a phone call he honestly isn't expecting. The caller is livid, panicked, near hysterical. “Soldiers everywhere!” he keeps repeating, “Tearing everything apart!” All in the name of Lady Claire-Isabella, who is calling it an 'inventory'. One she obviously hopes will be complete before David has a chance to hear of it. So that she can lie to him about the results if necessary. “The things they're looking most closely at,” his jumpy little bird warbles when David finally gets him calmed down enough to go into a little bit of detail, “The questions they're asking... it's as though she thinks we're trying to steal something from your power plant to make some kind of... nuclear weapon.”

The car is pulling up to the door, stopping. David dismisses his informant with firm instructions to observe everything and above all to calm down. Without thinking about whether or not the statement is true, David assures the man that he believes he is in no danger. His door is being opened. He emerges looking serious yet warm, determined, gravely optimistic. It is an expression he has practiced to perfection over the course of lifetimes.

Claire greets him as he enters the cloakroom, looking pale and worried and pissed. But not at him. Perfect. Not withstanding the games she thinks she is running on him, his is certainly working on her. “The insistence on bringing forward the Bill of Rights, I could accept as being in good faith, despite the timing,” she explains to David and a half dozen other Senators whom she has trusted to join her for this pre-meeting meeting. “But in combination with the proposal to eliminate the V-system immediately, with no period of transition, no effort to address the effects this will have on the ration system.... If this proposal passes, thousands of V1s and V2s will be forced to pay for food and medicine like the rest of us with no thought whatsoever to where they're supposed to get the money. The V3s and 4s will lose their per child subsidies.”

“More than that,” David agreed, sensing a cue. “Every aspect of public administration in Vega will be affected. The school funding and admission formulas, military housing assignments, curfews, residence zones, everything. Not to mention the effects of the inevitable demand for rapid, inflationary wage increases and to monetize previously conscripted services, changes which will be both necessary and impossible in the short and medium term.” Claire nods, clearly grateful that he gets it and is jumping to her aid.

“But since it's being packaged as Lower V friendly, as the dawn of freedom in the post-Riesen era....” Senator Leonidas picks up the ball and runs with it. “If we're not careful, we'll be the bad guys for blocking it just as much as we would be for passing it. 'Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.' We've got to generate a workable counter proposal immediately.”

David is ready to speak at this, but relieved when he doesn't have to. “That's true,” Senator Adams speaks up sharply, “but it's not the point. The point is that this proposal was _designed to create unrest!_ It couldn't possibly have any other outcome, Romero and Greywell certainly know that even if Young Ms. Frost doesn’t! It's a power-play, pure and simple. And they've dragged that idiot girl along to be their figurehead, to hide behind and to throw under the bus if they fail.”

~~~~~

Claire shifts in her seat uncomfortably. They are saying everything she needs them to say, realizing everything she needs them to realize. But the undercurrent of acknowledgment that her father's rule is regarded by the masses as symbolic of oppression, that it's end is being watched with hope by all those who dream of freedom, that it is now these dreamers who pose the most immediate threat to the safety and wellbeing of the City, does not sit well. Mere days have passed since Claire herself dreamed those dreams and lived in the hope that her father could make them come true.

“ ...And they've dragged that idiot girl along to be their figurehead, to hide behind and to throw under the bus if they fail,” Senator Adams is saying. Claire's tongue chaffs at his characterization, but she holds it still. Senator Adams, like Leonidas, is a graying elder, a staunch ally of her father. She needs his support now more than ever. But Emily Frost is not an 'idiot' and never had been, even as a girl.

Two possibilities strike Claire. Either Romero (burned that David is solidifying his alliance with Claire to the disadvantage of his erstwhile co-conspirator) is using Greywell (who _is_ an idiot, but also close to House Frost) to practice upon Emily in her time of grief and incite her to force Claire's now reluctant hand on the issue of eliminating the V-system, a goal the two young women have sometimes jointly fantasized about reaching 'someday'. Or, Emily somehow knows that her father's death was not an accident but the act of the Riesen-Whele establishment, one way or another.

Claire wishes she could hope for the first possibility, which might be solvable with counter proposals after all; but frankly, the second seems far more likely. Emily is close enough to any number of the younger Senators (not to mention Greywell) to have gotten unofficial information about what really caused the crisis at the Agritower. And if not, her new position of authority over the Agritower personnel (some of whom must know more than they let on) could have led her to the same revelation all too easily. It has to be that, Claire realizes. If it were just a matter of Greywell and Romero pouring poison in her ear about Claire's sudden supposed hypocrisy, Emily would have come to Claire first, with a proposal or at least an ultimatum. Adams is right, if for all the wrong reasons. This has nothing to do with public policy. It's a prelude to a coup, pure and simple. The Houses of Romero and Frost are making common cause against those of Riesen and Whele for power and revenge.

There is a third possibility, of course. One strongly suggested by Romero's involvement. Romero who, not two weeks ago, was to have been the instrument of David's usurpation against her father. Romero could still be working for David, putting both Greywell and Frost up to disgracing themselves on his behalf, to manipulate Claire into relying on David more, giving him more power. Setting up a power-play of his own against House Whele's main competitor in the field of engineering and construction services. Claire rates this possibility as unlikely. Not that she would put it past David to set up something like that. But what would Romero gain? She is cutting her own throat unless this whole mess actually results in the fall of House Riesen, an outcome which is no longer to David's advantage, as she must realize. Besides, the timing is wrong. David would rather be somewhere else right now.

The conversation continues. Claire listens, contributes, make decisions. All are in agreement. This is not the time to publicly call out three Senators as traitors and acknowledge that games are being played with the food supply. Instead, the Gang of Three will be preempted by an announcement from the Lady of the City of the wonderful new measures that she is putting before the Senate for immediate approval. In light of Vega's first ever projected Agricultural surplus, there will be a stepped increase in rations for all V1s and V2s and in per-child food subsidies for V3s and V4s nearly doubling the free distribution of food in Vega over the course of the next year while curtailing the projected increase in food for sale by nearly half, leaving House Frost with only moderate profits for the work of it's late founder. Birth incentives will be extended to V2s for the first time, presumably increasing free distribution still further in the medium-long-term, keeping food for sale at or only slightly above historic levels. Finally, to insure that projected harvests are met so that all of these promises can be fulfilled, the Argitowers will be placed under the Joint Guardianship of House Frost and House Whele.

This last makes Claire a little uneasy. It is a bit too consistent with the Third Possibility. But it will be harder to cast as tyrannical by critics of the establishment (especially those at the more capitalist end of the spectrum) than if the Senate (or House Riesen) were to take direct control. Besides, David's engineers really will be needed now that Frost is gone. Claire doesn't see a better option than to assume that David is acting more-or-less in good faith... even if for him that will almost certainly mean turning the new powers entrusted to his House to his personal advantage one way or another. Without his own dynasty to cultivate, his advantages are getting closer to Claire's—and thus to the City's—all the time anyway, she tries to reassure herself. When he is led to believe that he does in fact have an 'heir' once again, this will be even more true.

“Okay, then,” Claire concludes, when the details of the proposal and the announcement have been hammered out. “Send for Frost. We will start by offering her the opportunity to join in our proposal and withdraw her own. If she's willing to do that, it's probably enough to watch them all for now and to privately make sure all our colleagues know how unwise it is to be too closely identified with Greywell and Romero.” Claire watches David out of the corner of her eye, but can read no reaction in him other than patient attention.

“And if not?” asks Senator Leonidas tensely.

“Pass our Bill, table hers, and arrange a scandal for Romero,” Claire says firmly, watching David even more closely. “Without her, Greywell will collapse and Frost will see reason.” If David is intent on destroying House Frost and ultimately rehabilitating Romero, no one could tell it from his expression. Nor is he the first to suggest that Claire ought to take a harder line. In fact he is downright noncommittal. Claire had intended to let herself be persuaded, but for now she noncommits. David must have a reason for hesitating to go for the throat against Frost, and Claire would like to know what it is.

~~~~~

David is worried he may be saying too little. It's not like him to be so quiet and let others take the lead quite this much when he is among those who clearly agree with him. And Claire must know that he has every reason to jump at the chance to see House Frost torn down. But Romero's involvement by itself is enough to arouse suspicion in more than a few minds that he has contrived this entire event to undermine House Frost. Of course, the fact that no one can see what's in it for her to go along with such a scheme, helps quite a bit; but still, he doesn't want to fuel speculation any more than he has to. Especially given what's about to happen next.

David has other worries in addition to modulating the nuances of his performance. The “inventory” of House Thorn preys on his mind. Impossible as it seems, the more he turns the situation over and over in him mind, the more inescapable his conclusion becomes. Claire honestly doesn't have a clue what Edward Riesen is up to. Not only has he not taken her into his confidence, not set up his 'retirement' with her in advance as a pretext for leaving; she has not figured out on her own what seems so obvious to David. General Riesen has promised Helena a nuclear weapon to be used in the war against Gabriel, a thing which—at the City's currently level of technical understanding—cannot possibly be produced. Ergo, he has gone somewhere else to get one. And yet, somehow, Claire does not know this. She imagines that Becca Thorn (a chemist, a biologist, in some ways an engineer) must have been branching out into nuclear physics!

Sometimes, David is truly horrified by the ignorance of the younger generation; how quickly known knowns (like the basic branches of science and how they do—or in this case don't—relate to one another) have become unknown unknowns. Because things like that haven't happened to make the curriculum lists of the otherwise useless poets and philosophers who have been assigned the task of educating them. Because scientists, doctors, nurses, even technicians have been too rare and precious to have been wasted in classrooms during these first years. And because their parents have been too busy fighting extinction and chaos to pay any attention. And so it has come to pass that the Lady of the City of Vega believes that it is possible to take fuel from the reactor, perform some not specific type of 'science' on it and, in a few weeks, recreate The Bomb.

While shocking, David realizes, this is not the most significant fact that Claire's misunderstanding of the situation reveals. Or the scariest. Her 'inventory' will soon put the fantasy that House Thorn could build a bomb to rest, and he doubts anything found there will reveal his role in what has gone on there to be any deeper than encouraging Becca to be fearless in the pursuit of knowledge on behalf of the City. No, it is not what Claire will find that troubles David, not the fact that she knows no better than to look where she is looking, but the fact that she is searching for answers at all. The fact that they haven't been given to her.

If Claire is not in on Edward's mission, if they have planned their recent political moves separately rather than together, then her sudden ascension to power must not be the planned, peaceful succession that it appears. It is a palace coup. Lady Claire-Isabella has deposed the General so deftly that he has been driven from the City without a word of protest. David is chilled, darkly amused, and deeply impressed. It seems Claire and her 'husband' have something in common after all. They both take the position that regime change begins at home.

David is beginning to be sorry to have orchestrated this meeting exactly when he has. If he is going to keep up with a 'friend' like Claire Riesen, he muses, it may be that he needs to pull her a hell of a lot closer. And at this moment he is missing a perfect opportunity. Because if and when Riesen returns, he will want to be as close to her as possible. Otherwise the General may get between them, alliances may shift again. He knows all too well that blood can sometimes cry louder than reason, overwhelming settled enmity born of a good cause. And after what he has seen the last three days, David Whele is no longer confident that he can stand alone against the two of them.

When the door bursts open, David is so deep in thought that it actually startles him. The hapless messenger rushes in. Her face is an almost comic mask of horror, but no one is laughing. Least of all David Whele. He braces himself to react to the news that Emily Frost is no longer among the living.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid!" Dexter Holland  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/offspring/youregonnagofarkid.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_LxyhCJpsM 
> 
> "Won't Get Fooled Again" Pete Townshend  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/who/wontgetfooledagain.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


	15. Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you  
> And then he kneels  
> He crosses himself  
> And then he clicks his high heels  
> And without further notice  
> He asks you how it feels  
> And he says, "Here is your throat back  
> Thanks for the loan".  
> ~Bob Dylan

Claire watches David's reaction like she's seeing him in slow motion. The discrepancy is subtle enough that she could convince herself she's imagining it, but she's not. The performance is good, but he's jumps his cue by fractions of a second, getting his expression ready in advance of the 'news' he's been patiently waiting to receive. His outrage at the 'idiotic mob' that has risen to riot and pulled a Senator from her car to be killed in the street is convincing, palpable. He draws on his well known contempt for the Lower Vs to give it heft and authenticity. Soon Leonidas and two or three other sheep are bleating along to his cries for a lockdown and mass arrests.

“Broadcast the order to Shelter-in-Place,” Claire half agrees, because at this point there is no choice but to clear the streets to prevent further violence. “Hold anyone whose already been taken overnight. Release them in the morning unless we know for a fact they're involved; in which case, bring a list of those to me. Meanwhile, we'll keep the Agritowers on lockdown and give everything a few hours to calm down. Tomorrow, I'll issue an Executive Order transferring their Guardianship, which the Senate will rush to ratify by Unanimous Resolution. We'll hold off on the rest of our Bill for now, but let it be known that the riots are delaying a sensible reform that would improve everyone's access to food.”

That settles it. Everyone nods. As David makes patronizing noises of support and congratulation on her 'leadership' in this 'unforeseen crisis', Emily Frost bounces through Claire's mind on a trampoline, a laughing child, tan hair flying about her face, bouncing wrong and falling... falling... falling, landing with a thump-crack that makes Claire's ten-year-old heart almost stop. Crying; she is hurt but also fine. A broken arm is not the end of the world. But if she had landed just a little differently...

“I need some air,” the Lady of the City declares suddenly, then abruptly invites the Senators to return quietly to their homes and begin leading by example. As David takes his leave, he takes the opportunity to say to her (the the hearing of Leonidas and others, Claire notices) that at least now they will have the opportunity to get on with the AC Review while they wait for more news on this second crisis, and that he will expect her at five as originally planned. Claire agrees, smiling tightly. The son-of-a-bitch actually expects to get away with convincing her he couldn't have planned this crisis because it's preventing him from fucking her and still get to fuck her after all.

When the last of the Senators has gone, Claire turns to an officer at her elbow and says, “See to it that Greywell and Romero are arrested at once and then make sure everybody knows it. Don't call it protective custody, either. I want to be very clear about this. Anyone who threatens the security of Vega's people, who tries to turn us against each other, is an Enemy of the City.”

~~~~~

The sun is getting lower in the sky, but still not low enough. Heat is radiating from the desert floor. William crouches in the slender shadow of a rock, baking. He raises his cupped hands as if to pray, then scoffs at himself bitterly. Alex Lannon is the Chosen One. The hands that held him are Micheal's. They are the enemies of Gabriel. Not that Gabriel seems overly concerned for him at the moment. William folds his hands in what he hopes is a correct imitation of the old way of prayer as he has read of it and heard it described. He begins an ancient litany, one he was taught in seminary as a matter of history rather than living religious practice, trying so very hard to mean the words with all the pieces of his heart, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name...”

~~~~~

Back in his sitting room, David pours himself a drink. Only a small one, though, and he sips it slowly. To say he feels triumphant would be an overstatement, but he is cautiously optimistic on nearly all fronts. So far, this is working better than he'd planned. He'd expected the riots to take longer both to build and to die down, that Frost might be killed sometime tonight and the city might burn until morning. When a flunky brings him the news of Greywell's and Romero's arrests, it worries him only because Claire has not consulted him before taking such a drastic action. Greywell knows nothing of his involvement and Romero would sooner die than risk revealing the little she knows and suffering the consequences.

But Claire's lack of trust is worse than he'd suspected. As he cues up music on his well maintained, prewar digital sound system, creating a brand new playlist, David hopes what he has planned for the evening will help with that and not make it worse. Sex is a tricky thing. There is nothing that can make a person feel so close, so willing to trust and connect and be vulnerable and forge bonds that they will later feel compelled to honor. But in a circumstance that creates feelings of betrayal and manipulation, there are few things that breed greater resentment than feeling obligated to have sex.

He had felt a little of both from Claire last night, vulnerability and resentment. But even as fumbling and nearly hostile as the sex had been, even after her terse admonition to 'just come', he had ended up holding her in his arms. And if it hadn't been for Lannon's unborn bastard making it's presence felt... well, if David is being truly honest with himself, he has to admit that maybe the vulnerability thing hadn't only been flowing in one direction. Well he had been half drunk last night. And dead tired, emotionally worn down. He doesn't expect to have that problem again this afternoon. This time he will have Claire on his own territory. And when you stack the deck yourself, it's pretty easy to play your cards right.

~~~~~

“Is My Lady pleased, then, with the results of the Inventory?” the nervous, wheedling little man asks, wringing his hands. Claire can't help frowning seriously at that question, but manages to assure him that she is. “The loyalty of House Thorn, you understand, was never in question,” she explains. He doesn't seem entirely convinced, but she's been told to expect that from him. “Dr. Brant,” Claire persists, grasping him by the hand, managing a warm, reassuring smile at last, House Thorn has always been House Riesen's closest ally. There has been trust between us, confidence. And as much as you and I both like to think that Becca and my father would have confided in us about anything important that they were collaborating on, we had to be sure that there was nothing vital falling through the cracks, with both of them... leaving us so suddenly.”

Claire's smile falters and her face becomes grim again. Brant avoids her eyes, once again clearly feeling uneasy. Well no wonder. Her excuses are so thin. Clearly inadequate to explain having soldiers ransack the place from top to bottom without consulting the Steward of the House. And Brant must feel a great deal of pressure to smooth things over without calling attention to that fact. Especially now that riot, death and intrigue are in the air. Not to mention the ongoing Purge. Claire continues to do her best to be reassuring without apologizing or explaining, but she's not good at this. This is the sort of thing they normally send David to do.

So he distrusts her. Fears her. It makes Claire uncomfortable, but it is what it is. She gets back to business. “How soon will Mr. Thorn be arriving?” she asks.

“Messengers were sent the night that—that very night,” Brant explains haltingly. “They have reached the third relay point without incident and in good time. By morning they should be close enough to transmit a message to Costa Bella, sooner if the last supply convoy has already started back and can relay for them part of the way. After that... it's two or three days journey for him, plus whatever time he feels he needs to prepare.”

“I want him here Thursday morning,” Claire counters crisply, “Prepared to attend Becca's funeral by ten a.m. and stand for her Senate Seat in the afternoon session.” Brant looks horrified but nods jerkily. It is Monday afternoon now. “The time for preparing is past,” Claire says sternly. “The enemies of this City are ready and taking action. Inside and out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Ballad of a Thin Man" Bob Dylan  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDC0b7rfK5U  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/ballad-thin-man


	16. The Decider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You sound so innocent,  
> All full of good intent.  
> You swear you know best.  
> But you expect me to  
> Jump up on board with you  
> And ride off into your delusional sunset.  
> I'm not the one who's lost  
> With no direction at all.  
> But you'll never see.  
> You're so busy makin' maps  
> With my name on them in all caps.  
> You've got the talkin' down  
> Just not the listening.  
> And who cares if you disagree?  
> You are not me.  
> Who made you king of anything?  
> So, you dare tell me who to be!  
> Who died and made you king of anything?  
> ~Sara Bareilles

No one shows Claire in. She strides into David's sitting room at the appointed time, but unannounced, looking extremely serious, intent, intense. While David tries to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing, he opens his arms to embrace her. He stumbles and has to catch himself on an end table when the flat of her hand catches him hard across the face. Then he has to catch himself again to keep from raising his hand to her in return. He raises it to his bleeding lip instead, still stunned. That was not what the boys down at Gitmo used to call an 'insult slap'. It was the real deal. And now here she stands, toe to toe with him, every bit as angry as before she'd done it, staring him down as if _he_ owes _her_ an explanation.

“What?” David says finally, facing her just as squarely, “What the hell was that for?”

“Emily,” she says simply, quietly seething. David is having difficulty formulating a response to that. A denial might only make her angrier, but an admission will probably make her feel justified in doing almost anything.

“Emily was plotting to overthrow you,” he argues, splitting the difference.

“Bullshit!” Claire nearly spits in his face. “You set her up to look like a traitor and then you killed her for a fucking engineering contract!” she shouts, inches from his face.

“The Agritowers are not just an engineering contract, Claire!” he shouts back just as forcefully, grateful that he's had the forethought to soundproof this room. “They are the life's blood of this entire City without which we will all die! But!” he cuts her off sharply as she prepares to shout back, “I didn't kill Emily Frost! Not intentionally,” he adds more quietly, drawing Claire in to what he hopes would soon be a calmer conversation. “And I had nothing to do with that Bill of hers. But when I got word of her proposal and the 'emergency meeting' she was calling just to add drama and publicity to the moment, I knew what she was up to. I put a few words in the right ears—”

“And who asked you to do that!?!” Claire demands, shouting over him angrily.

“You may not have asked me to do it, but you needed me to!” David shoots right back.

“And since when do you decide what—!”

“Since always! You father never had to tell me when I needed to—!”

“Well I'm not my father—!!”

“—take care of something so—!!!”

“—And neither are you!!!!” Claire wins the shouting match. Her last words hang in the acid silence for a long moment before David finds his tongue.

“I wanted to get our side of the argument out to the people before it was too late,” David says carefully at last, not wanting to set her off again but still determined to make his point. “To discredit all three of them, and yes to get the food supply out of her control more quickly. I expected... a showing of support. I didn't know they'd riot and kill her, for Vega's sake!”

Claire takes as step backwards and looks at him, shaking her head, not sure herself if she's buying it, he thinks. She really must not be, because she soon changes tack. “We've questioned Romero,” she says coolly. And David has to school his features not to smile at that obvious bluff as she blatantly watches for his reaction.

“Then you know I was never involved,” he answers calmly.

“The funny thing is, she says you were.” Whatever promise she may have at chess, Claire certainly isn't cut out to play poker. Her expression is that of a child eagerly hoping to get away with what she thinks is a very clever fib. If this is how she got William to reveal himself as the Chief Acolyte of Gabriel, he ought to be even more ashamed.

“Bullshit,” David replies, “she's lying. Trying to save her own ass.”

Claire looks uncertain, but still angry. She is obviously stacking up his denials and Romero's with the lack of any other real evidence and wondering if she's got the shoe on the wrong foot, despite the dumpster-behind-the-seafood-shack stink of the circumstances. Despite the obvious conclusion reached by following the money. She lets out a sigh more disgruntled than relieved. She is still on her feet, still looking David squarely in the eyes, not quite so in his face as before, but frankly close enough. Frustrated but not quite defeated. “From now on, David,” she says coolly, “before you go 'putting words in the right ears' to cause a riot in my City, I expect to hear about it from you. And the next time one of your personal rivals so happens to accidentally turn up dead without my express—and I do mean express—authorization, I'm not going to sit and wonder what you've done to keep the dots from connecting. If this happens again, we'll be scatting your ashes next. Is that understood?”

“Claire I—” David isn't faking being shocked or worried, though he is faking being tongue tied and not angry. “I underst—but...” She levels a sever, impatient, cut-the-crap look at him, lips pressed tight together. “Understood,” he answers finally, lowering his head in an appearance of shame so that she can't see his eyes blazing in frustration and rage. The whole situation is no good at all. She's already gotten to know him well enough to know that if there is no evidence that he's done something, it doesn't mean he's innocent, just that he's left no evidence.

Still, David comforts himself, he's more or less won this round. The Agritowers will come into his guardianship, and House Frost will not be around to bid on any upcoming construction projects. Claire will be Canonized among the Lower-V's for 'reforms' much less radical than they would have demanded from her father, nothing more than the effects of increased agricultural production really. And her silly 'Bill of Rights' will be tabled for all eternity. But Claire has not taken kindly to being lead from behind, and anyone can see that she honestly means to reign him in in the future, and that she has the balls to do it too. In fact, David realizes, the larger reason that he's been slapped just now instead of shot is not that she lacks evidence, though she does. The larger reason is that she still needs him to do her bidding. And she does not intend to put up with him doing anything else.

David takes a deep breath, sits down on the sofa, and pours himself a drink from the decanter on the coffee table. Claire sits down next to him, but refuses the drink he offers to pour her. “I probably shouldn't if I'm... trying to get pregnant,” she points out, sounding suddenly shy. Embarrassed to be lying to him about such a grave matter after dressing him down for deceiving her, David supposes.

“Well, If that's your idea of foreplay, Claire,” David 'jokes' making his voice soft and amused but choosing hard words, “I'm amazed you ever get laid.” Claire just rolls her eyes and pours herself a glass of water. David has to warn himself to watch his tongue, not to indulge himself in too much venom. But he is still tense and angry from having his life threatened two minutes earlier, and from being forced to acknowledge his submission. At this moment, he doesn't so much want to romance Claire or even fuck her as to beat her with his cane and tell her that she has no business running this City, that it is his turn, and he can do a better job. But he couldn't do that to Riesen, no matter how much he wanted to and he can't do it to Claire either. The people love, honor, and obey her. And his only choice, other than dying or killing her, is to do the same. Or at least to do a much, much better job of seeming to.

David sits and drinks a minute or two more, collecting his thoughts while Claire sits silently beside him. Brooding. “I've been getting on with the Purge,” he says after a while. “Having the Archangel V-2s who were flagged in screening held on suspicion of riot and murder, which gives us the freedom to either later release them as a magnanimous gesture to all the patriotic Lower-V's who stood up for Vega today or to arrest their superiors for instigating the riots without implying that Michael had them working for Gabriel all along. I assume you don't disapprove of my taking that much initiative?”

“Not on something we've already agreed to do, no,” Claire says tightly, obviously still very angry. David would swear she is actually offended, actually hurt by the girl's death, not just smarting from being out maneuvered. He hadn't known she and Ms. Frost were so close. But then, perhaps it is just her residual distaste for murder. Not that her husband's murder seems to be bothering her much. “It's not the same damned thing, and you know it,” she chides him, and for a moment it seems as if she's read his mind. Because it's not the same damned thing, and he does know it. William really is a traitor. Truth be told, there are points of view from which David could be given the same label. Even he isn't sure what he would have done three days ago if Gabriel had come to the gates of Vega with a conquering army rather than a ruse of surrender. David shoves it aside. His life had been threatened, then as now. He'd done what was necessary to survive, and that's what he's still doing. Besides, that isn't what Claire is talking about.

“I can start intensive interrogations tonight,” he offers, trying to get back into the moment, here with Claire, to remind her how useful he can be. Trying to sidestep the issue of his insubordination.

“That's fine,” Claire says, “You do that. But I want hourly reports on everything you find out and full transcripts of all interviews available to me on demand. This is my investigation, David. Because this is my City, and every single thing that happens in Vega is my responsibility and my business and I will decide what needs to be done and who needs to do it. None of this 'you make my problems go away and I bury my head in the sand and don't ask too many questions' crap like you had with my father. Is that understood?”

“With all due respect,” David begins, working up to his honestly indignant reply to this childish, petulant insistence on control, to the determent of her own very clear interest in future dependability.

But Claire cut him off abruptly. “Is that understood?” she demanded, her voice crackling with fire and ice.

“Understood,” David replies coolly, deciding it's her business if she wants to get her hands dirty and expose herself to the risk of being blamed right along with him for everything she's having him do. Truthfully, it gives her less control over him and gives him more assurance that he will survive, both physically and politically, as long as the regime stands. In that way, it brings their inserts closer together, and all to his advantage. So let the fool girl be Nixon if she wants, David reasons, as long as he's the one with the tapes. There's no need stopping her in the middle of a mistake just because she aggravates his pride.

“Now then,” Claire says, seeming to declare the matter settled, satisfied that everyone knows whose on top, “Lets just... get started so we can get this over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "King of Anything" Sara Bareilles  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sarabareilles/kingofanything.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7-AUmiNcA


	17. Chosen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fall on real life.  
> Is anybody left there sane?  
> If we slide on over and accept fate  
> Then it's bound to be a powerful thing.  
> If it's just that you're weak  
> Can we talk about it?  
> It's gettin' so damn creepy  
> Just nursing this ghost of chance  
> The fiction, the romance  
> And the Technicolor dreams  
> Of black and white people.  
> ~Rob Thomas

“Lets just... get started so we can get this over with,” Claire finds herself saying. She didn't come here expecting to have sex. But as her temper cools, she realizes she's only been fooling herself that she has a choice. She has already made too much of the importance of bearing David's child. He has to be convinced that she is trying her best to achieve that. And that the outcome remains in doubt.

“Be still my heart(!)” David answers her dryly. His smile is grim and sardonic.

“Isn't it always,” Claire replies just as darkly, still pissed. She'd about as soon punch David in the face as look at him right now. But she's displayed her temper enough already. Too much. For the time being she is still in bed with David politically, has not yet decided to cut her losses, still hopes that she might not have to. He is still more of an asset than a liability. As long as he doesn't pull any more crap like this. That being the case, she really doesn't have much choice but to get in bed with him physically one more time, no matter how much it galls her. No matter how tempted she is to use her anger as an excuse to walk away.

“Well you aren't moving anything else much either with that attitude,” David points out, trying to sound grimly amused, but clearly just as angry as she is. She could still pick a fight with him pretty easily, get him to throw her out. Then it would be on him that they aren't having sex tonight. She couldn't be blamed for derailing their plans to create a joint heir, especially when they get the good news that they succeeded on the first shot after all. But she can't risk having David suspect that that's what she's doing, even after the fact.

“Do you want me to suck it again?” Claire offer's. She manages not to heave a sigh of resignation, but she can tell that David is offended by the complete lack of passion in her voice. At his little head shake and sniff of not quite laughter, she rolls her eyes and does sigh after all. “What?” she demands. In the past six hours he's undermined her authority, started a riot in her City and murdered one of her oldest friends. What does he expect her to do at the thought of sucking his penis? Turn cartwheels?

“There are words for 'it',” he says, just a bit petulantly. “You're not a child.”

“Seriously?” Claire is more than a little annoyed now. “I offer to suck your cock, and you're mad because I didn't _say_ 'please let me suck your cock?' And yet you're the one calling me childish? Do you want me to say 'mother may I'?”

“I wish you wouldn't,” David replies a lot less harshly, sounding tired and amused but no longer angry. Almost apologetic. Its such a quick change that Claire is sure it must be a deliberate moderation of the emotion he is choosing to show rather than a genuine change in what he is actually feeling. He's just trying to get past the hostility to the sex. Which is what she wants/needs him to do, Claire has to remind herself. He's not being any more false or manipulative than he always has been. With everyone. That's just David being David, feline and predatory. She shouldn't take it so personally.

“Alright, so, let's just...” Claire starts in leaning over to unbuckle his belt, trying to stay focused, businesslike, on task, “start with that part. I think that's probably the fastest way—”

“Claire,” David all but sighs, somewhere between scolding and apology, taking hold of her hands and shaking his head. Seconds ago, Claire would have said she knew every single expression David's face could possibly make, but now he does something with his eyes that she hasn't exactly seen before. Something wistful, mildly disapproving and deeply affectionate. It has to do with the way his eyes crinkle around the edges, similar to when he smiles, but not the same, making them impossibly deeper or greener or something even harder to name. “Much as I love a direct approach, under the right circumstances, that barely worked for us last night,” he points out reasonably. This is a trick somehow, Claire is sure of it. “Why don't we just try to relax a bit and—” Claire openes her mouth to interrupt, but David put a finger to her lips. His flesh is so warm and so infinitely gently pressed against that thin, delicate skin. She has a strange impulse to open her jaws and snap at it, but instead she remains still as he implores, “Just... humor me, would you? Indulge me a bit. I think we might get better results from a more... well I don't want to say _romantic_ , but a more natural approach.”

“Meaning... what exactly?” Claire asked skeptically. What _is_ he after exactly? More control? Sheer amusement? Better sex? He's not easing up on that strange, softly compelling fall-into-my-eyes-and-drown expression. It makes Claire feel agitated, uncomfortable in her own skin. It's a feeling she resents.

“Sit with me a while,” David urges her gently, the tiniest bit of a whine in his voice. Unless she's imagining it. “Hold my hand. Talk to me. About something other than death and taxes, I mean. Have dinner with me. Listen to some music. We could dance even.”

“No,” Claire says flatly, getting to her feet, shaking her head. “David, I'm not _dating_ you. This is business, politics.” A look of frightening anger flashes across David's face. Even when it is gone, he can't hide his disappointment. His frustration. Claire is sure now. He has some elaborate plan that she is foiling, though what it is exactly, she can't begin to guess. Some kind of mind game, obviously, but to what end? Whatever it is, Claire is just about out of patience. She needs to get this done and get out of here. “Stand up,” she commands him, her voice harder, angrier than she intends. “Take off your pants.”

“Really, Claire—” David starts to argue, just a bit indignantly.

“Take them off!” she demands, even more harshly. “I don't have time for your bullshit.”

“We could skip the whole thing for all I care,” he all but snarls. Probably the most authentic sentiment he's expressed all day, Claire thinks. Despite her thoughts of a few short minutes ago, Claire isn't even tempted. She's not letting him let her off the hook only to take note of her eagerness to be let off of it, despite her stated goals. And even if that isn't what he's up to, she'll be damned if she'll wake up tomorrow owing him for this small mercy.

“No,” she tells him flatly. “Get it out and let's do this. I've got a crap ton of work left to do tonight cleaning up your mess.”

~~~~~

“She can't see us,” Gabriel explains needlessly. He likes to hear the sound of his own voice. Alex is noticing that a lot already. It seems to be his defining quality in fact. Micheal's worst sin may be wrath, but Gabriel's is definitely pride. “Two way glass. All she sees is her own reflection, but we can see through to the other side clear enough, can't we Alex?” Alex shrugs. What's he supposed to say? Noma is sitting on her bunk, staring straight ahead. Being stoic. Or maybe just bored. “She's alive, as you can see,” Gabriel continues. “Clean, dry, warm, well fed. A bit confined, but certainly not chained to a wall. Satisfied?”

“Not the word I'd use,” Alex says tightly. He doesn't let Gabriel see him shiver, not sure if it is fear or rage or what that is trying to shake him from within. “Show me Riesen now,” he demands calmly.

Gabriel smiles as if at some secret. As if seeing through something that Alex can't. Maybe it's only because he knows Alex's obvious angle and figures he's three steps ahead. “As you wish,” the angel says and leads the way.

There is no two way glass for Riesen. He doesn't need it. He is lying in what looks like an infirmary bed, hooked up to what seems like a dozen beeping, blinking machines, his inert body bound to them by dozens of wires and tubes.

~~~~~

“Take them off!” Claire demands, “I don't have time for your bullshit.” David has to remind himself not to lose his temper. Showing some anger might be what he decides is best, but that's not the same thing as losing control. But the ugly insistence in Claire's voice is something he's never heard before in a real life sexual context, not even last night when he'd been pressed to perform services for her that neither of them had ever wanted or expected.

“We could skip the whole thing for all I care,” David snarls, shocked by the depth of his own resentment. He had thought he was beyond the idea of limits to how hard a person should press.

“No,” she tells him flatly. “Get it out and let's do this. I've got a crap ton of work left to do tonight cleaning up your mess.”

David blinks at her, not believing what he is hearing. She is picking a fight with him, he decides after one terrifying moment, hiding his relief, amplifying his waning disappointment. This is his cue to throw her out, to avoid the necessity of sex between them after all. He might as well. He clearly has nothing to gain from fucking her other than an orgasm, which at this point he is more than happy to forgo. It certainly won't strengthen their alliance any, that much is obvious. “If you don't want to be here,” he snaps, pointing dramatically, “there's the door.”

“No,” Claire repeats, looking very genuinely angry and whats more, determined, stubborn. Face set. Like the child he's always known, sweet and obedient except when she isn't. If she's acting, her acting has improved rapidly. “The alliance between our Houses—”

“Will either continue or it won't whoever contributes to spawning your bastard heir!” David shouts back. “If this is what our 'Union' means, I think I'd rather have my fifty shekels and my goat back.” David expects to get a pretty hard slap for that. He's counting on it. Claire will slap him. He will raise his hand as if to slap her back but then think better of it. There may be just a little more yelling or that may be enough. Then she will leave. And if things are no better between them than an hour ago, a least they won't be any worse. And tonight he might finally get some sleep.

But Claire doesn't slap David. She fold her arms and in a voice full of ice she says, “You think that's funny don't you? You and my dad making your little contract without even telling me? Letting me find out about it at the Jubilee along with every V-2 in Vega. I bet you and your angel worshiping son had a good laugh after that. The look on my face must have been priceless(!)”

David is shocked. It takes him a moment to understand that she has just said what she's just said and that, given the ways she's said it, it must be true. Even her vicious slur against William makes little impression in comparison. “I... don't know what to say...” he hears himself whisper truthfully, lowering his head, frankly a bit ashamed. Apparently, he's not quite as jaded as he's led himself to believe. William had said as much, but David would rather think about even Claire's revelation than that. He'd known, of course, that she'd never _wanted_ to marry William, never felt she'd had much of a choice. But that wasn't at all the same thing as not even being asked to choose. “I made my agreement solely with Edward, true enough,” he finds himself explaining, “but I just _assumed_...”

“Oh, cut the crap, David!” Claire snaps impatiently. “The only reason you give a fuck what I think is because I have power over you. Well guess what? I _do_ have power over you. You work for me, David. Period. End of sentence. And if I tell you to take your pants off, you had damned well better take them off. If I was giving you a choice, I'd have said so.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Black & White People" Rob Thomas  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/matchbox20/blackwhitepeople.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Xui953KCs


	18. Too Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t know that you’d be leavin’  
> Or who you thought you were talkin’ to  
> I figure maybe we’re even  
> Or maybe I’m one up on you  
> I send you all my money  
> Just like I did before  
> I tried to reach you honey  
> But you’re driftin’ too far from shore
> 
> ~ Bob Dylan

“Take your cock out,” Claire insists, livid, damned well determined to be obeyed, “That's an order, you old bastard!”

“No,” David says flatly. “Fuck you!” he snaps an instant later. “You're right, you bitch, I'm not your father! I'm not the one who fucking sold your ass to the enemy because I didn't think you had the sand to stand on your own two feet and run this City without me! You do whatever you want with your Daddy Issues, Sweetheart; but don't try to take it out on me!” Claire shouts back just as angrily, and (if she is being honestest with herself) probably making even less sense. She threatens him with death again, makes the point that nothing he says in his defense will be believed.

Somewhere underneath her anger, some part of Claire watches in horror, completely understanding David's reasons for hissing and rattling like a snake. He is honestly terrified, afraid for his life, as well he should be. His voice shakes, but he raises it to her anyway. “Call your soldiers, Claire! Put a bullet in my brain if that's what you think you need to do to win this pissing contest you've cooked up in your head. Never mind I've already rolled over and showed you my belly! Never mind I've told you you're the boss and promised to be a good boy. Pretend that was easy. Pretend it doesn't mean a fucking thing. Go on, call them! Lie like Potiphar's wife. Make me a villain before the whole City! I don't care what you do! You're not going to _rape_ me just to prove you're a badass!”

David's words hang in the silence. Claire can't speak. The truth of what he's just accused her of is unspeakable. Undeniable. As reality rushes in at Claire, she finds herself suddenly trapped in her own skin, fully comprehending for the first time what it means to be 'beside yourself' with rage and to 'come to yourself' afterward. “Oh!” she says at last, eyes wide, heart pounding. She had nothing else to say, so she takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. She feels marginally better. Except for the sick, dreadful feeling of shame in the pit of her stomach.

David sits back down on his sofa. Holding on to the armrest. Shaking. Claire doesn't know if she pities or is frightened of him. She wishes she had something to hold on to.

~~~~~

“Don't touch it,” the tinny little voice scolds in a loud gasp-whisper. “It might wake up.”

“But I want to _see_ it,” an even smaller but clearly determined voice peeps.

Michael blinks and opens his eyes, but all he can see are black feathers sparsely penetrated by sunlight. The smell of hay and horseshit reminds him where he is, and where he isn't. He has unfurled in the night again, wrapped his wings around himself to protect him from his dreams. But the truth is a sword against which no shield can defend.  _ Murder is a crime for men. Is it a crime for angels? _

Michael manages to lie still long enough that the children conclude he must be dead. He hopes against hope that that will be the end of it, but of course it is not. They are too curious, these little humans. At any age. Soon they convince themselves that it is safe to come closer. When small fingers force themselves roughly among his feathers. His wings twitch reflexively. Not a lot, but enough.

The children run screaming from the barn and Michael curses quietly. He stows his wings and prepares to lie to the adults who are sure to come seeking the source of the trouble. _No, Sir; No Ma'am. No angels here. Nobody in here but us chickens._

~~~~~

The words have left David's lips before he even knows that they are coming, all in a thundering torrent. He is honestly shocked. At first he doesn't know what's come over him. He doesn't know if he's just done something brave or crazy. Claire is still impossible to read, standing over him, making him aware of the fact that he is sitting down. Trying to understand his own motives and intentions is confusing enough. He has acted (or rather reacted) purely on impulse. Death threats he's prepared to expect if not quite suffer gladly. But this? It's too much. David has little enough pride to swallow that he can stomach being the Queen's Confessor, The Black Cardinal, her Faithful Minion even, but he goddamned well won't be her bitch, her _victim_ for Vega's sake! If for no other reason, he knows he wouldn't live long that way.

David doesn't start thinking all of this until sometime after he has spoken, after he has sat down, but it seems to fit. He sits there with his heart in his throat and his life in her hands. Something had to be said, he decides. Claire seems calmer now, though that may only be because she's made peace with the fact that he has to die. But David doubts it. And regardless, something had to be said.

A moment ago, Claire had been angry enough to carry through with her threatened sexual aggression in the face of his protests. But even in the doubtful event that he could manage to perform under threat of death, she couldn't stay that angry, that irrational. And when she was herself again, she would have hated him for 'letting' her cross that line. And one way or another, if Claire hates him, at least one of them will wind up dead. Realistically, probably David.

Not brave or crazy, David realizes, feeling better, more like himself. He hadn't had the option of playing it safe, that was all. Somehow, instinctively, he must have known that. There is no safe in this situation. When your enemy takes no prisoners (or takes them for toys, he can't help thinking, remembering a girl he used to know who kept pictures of naked Iraqi men fucking each other at gunpoint on her cell phone) the most dangerous thing you can do is to surrender. This is one of those situations. When standing your ground is the only sane thing to do. David can only hope that it has worked.

Claire is still looking at him strangely, still breathing like it's some kind of East Asian religious art, when the intercom buzzes. When Claire tell David miserably, apologetically, that he can answer it, he literally weeps with relief. And then with shame. He has to take a moment to make sure he is keeping the sound of tears out of his voice. He's pretty sure he's going to live another day, and for that he is grateful to God. It doesn't take long for anger to bubble up through the fissure ripped in his psyche by that realization. So much so that when he is asked, just for spite he replies that Lady Claire-Isabella has indeed agreed to stay for dinner.

Claire nods, her face suddenly pale. She is the one shaking now. David wipes away the last of his tears and fights the urge to smile. Her guilt and her shock at her own behavior are actually working to his advantage now. She doesn't feel entitled to refuse his hospitality. It is exactly the break he needs. The edge that will let him get a grip on the situation. Sharing a meal will give them both the chance to calm down, to become comfortable enough to speak to each other normally again. And then David will at last be able to put his plan into action.

Claire's transgression has put David in a better position than he's been in since this whole mess started. It has virtually nullified the effect of his miscalculation in murdering Frost too soon. Claire has surrendered the moral high ground, and now it is his perch from which to assail her. First he will forgive her. Then he will emphasize with her, 'understand' her. Soon she will be helpless to resist his consolation, his compassionate embrace. His friendship.

Consul Whele is back in the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "Driftin' Too Far From Shore" Bob Dylan  
> http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/driftin-too-far-shore  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxBAGTqNUMc
> 
> Cf. "Drifting Too Far From the Shore" Charles E. Moody  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Moody  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/emmylouharris/driftingtoofarfromtheshore.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4LVxJQv5q4


	19. Like a Hole in the Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, the angel from my nightmare,  
> The shadow in the background of the morgue.  
> The unsuspecting victim of darkness in the valley.  
> We can live like Jack and Sally  
> If we want....  
> I miss you, miss you.  
> I miss you, miss you.  
> Where are you? And I'm so sorry.  
> I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight.  
> I need somebody and always  
> This sick strange darkness  
> Comes creeping on so haunting every time.  
> And as I stared I counted  
> The webs from all the spiders  
> Catching things and eating their insides.  
> Like indecision to call you  
> And hear your voice of treason.  
> Will you come home and stop this pain tonight?  
> ...Don't waste your time on me.  
> You're already the voice inside my head.  
> ~blink-182

As soon as the sun touches the horizon, William is moving again. Hot air still swirls around him, like a convection oven. It doesn't matter. He can't be still any longer. He's had little rest and less sleep. That doesn't matter either. He has to keep going. After thirty-six hours in this desert, his water is two-thirds gone. He still has plenty of food for another couple of days. If he can continue to force himself to eat. He still has plenty of bullets, for that matter.

William has a more immediate problem. One that is getting unignorable. To pee or not to pee is no longer a question. It has to happen soon, with or without his direction. But it's also a waste of water. The thought that he should try to save it nags at his mind. That he will be glad to have it in another thirty or forty hours, when he's been five or ten hours with nothing to drink at all.

He can almost hear his father and General Riesen scoffing at the idea. It goes against the US Army Field Manual on Survival, the one sacred text they both still agree on. But plenty of other people have done it and survived because of it. Besides, as far as William can tell, neither Riesen nor his father is doing a good enough job of managing his own life to start advising others. Both are fallen leaders, running scared. At the mercy of Claire Riesen.

It doesn't matter. His canteen is not empty. It contains his most precious resource. And otherwise, he doesn't have a pot to piss in. Even if he knew for certain that he was right and not just trying to prove someone else wrong, he can't afford to do even the things he knows he should do to survive, William realizes. He's like V-1 with a bright idea, literally too poor to pay attention.

His father would be amused by the concrete reality of these idiomatic expressions, William thinks sullenly. He can almost hear him pointing out the facts, that 'clever' sneer in his voice. But that's not really the truth. Is it? The anguish in his father's eyes as he got back in his car to drive away haunts William's memory. For a moment, it makes him doubt the justice of his opinion of David Whele's callousness.

But he did get back in the car. He did drive away. Whether or not he 'hated to' or felt really bad about it; here William is. Alone. Dumped in the wilderness like a stray dog while the August Senator has chosen to go home. Back to Vega. Back to Claire. To grovel and whine and show her his belly. To convince her he is her sweet pet so she won't order him put down too.

“Oh, Father!” William rails aloud, doing his best to ignore the fact that at this moment he is holding his limp little prick in his hands, spraying the thirsty desert with his irreplaceable vital fluids, 'pissing his life away' as someone might have joked unkindly at his expense. “All that talk about strength!” All that talk about strength, and he hadn't even have the guts that General Riesen had, to try and make it to New Delphi. Not even to save his own son from dying in the desert. “Fine!” William shouts. “I don't need you! I have Gabriel! He loves me! He protects me! He thinks I'm worthy! He's more my father than you are!”

Silence rings. The desert air is unmoved. Least of all by the beating of Angel wings.

~~~~~

Silence. Forks scrape on China. Claire stares down at her plate. David stares out at the sunset behind her shoulder. Aware that it is beautiful. Unmoved. 

He tries not to think of the desert night that is falling around his son. Tries to focus, to concentrate, to work his winning strategy. But it will be dark again soon, and very cold. The second night. Following the second brutal day. William may already be dead. He probably is in fact. If he hasn't died of heat stroke or hypothermia, he's probably shot himself by now.

Surely, David thinks, even William can't hold on to hope long under these circumstances. But that stupid question rings in his ears, _'Will I see you again?'_ Maybe he is still out there. Clinging to life. Convinced that Gabriel is coming for him, even if his father isn't. Maybe he'll be out there two or three more days. Alone. Going insane. Tongue swelling with thirst.

“A bullet to the head's probably the best thing,” Claire says out of nowhere. “Clean. Unapologetic. Much more so than the needle or even the firing squad.”

David is startled for only a tenth of a second. Then he nods. “With all official ceremony,” he agrees, caught up to her now. They are talking about the Purge. “We want to imply they've all had a fair trial to go with their fine shootings, even if security demands that we keep the details to ourselves.”

Claire responds in kind and they talk shop for a while. David sighs internally. This is not what their dinner conversation should be about. Violence always sickens Claire and David is in no mood for it himself. Frankly he's had enough for one night. Besides, talking about the Purge will keep Claire focused, watchful, thinking about power and motives and everyone's next moves.

This is not the plan. This dinner is supposed to be romantic. A chance for her to relax and forget to feel wary, to enjoy letting her guard down. But there's too much tension for that. Too much awareness on her part that his insisting she stay after the way she's behaved has to be some kind of move, that he can't possibly be truly in want of her company for it's own sake after that.

There's no denying it. So David takes a deep breath and goes with it. “Let's forget about all that for one night though, can't we?” he sighs aloud. Then he allows himself a thin smile. “Planning the brutal elimination of the enemies of The State is so depressing. It interferes with my ulterior movies for keeping you here.”

Claire gives him a tired, forbearing look. Not the wary smile he is hoping for. “Which are?” she asks.

“I already told you,” he replies, giving her a sneakily hopeful little smile of his own. “I want us to relax, act normal. Listen to music. Talk about the sunset.” At that, Claire gives a dutiful, sidelong glance over her shoulder, somewhere between impatient and unimpressed. “I want us to get comfortable with each other. Act like lovers or at least friends... and _then_ have hot, nasty, secret, politically motivated, procreative sex,” he finishes with a devilish little grin, followed on immediately with a much more sympathetic, almost desperately hopeful look.

Claire starts to roll her eyes, but then her expression softens, not so much annoyed as perplexed. That's at least a little better. “But why?” she asks with a small shake of her head. “I don't get why this is so important to you.”

Now it is David's turn to appear perplexed. Which he does, right on cue. “I thought that was obvious,” he says. “We both want this alliance to work. We both _need_ assurance that it's working, that it has to work, that no one is backing out. We need to burn our boats, Claire. We need to materially commit to the fact that there is only one future for both of us, one future for Vega. I thought you understood that when you asked me to get you pregnant in the first place... I thought—”

David turns his head away as he lets his voice break with emotion, lets himself tremble just a little. He can feel Claire feeling sorry and ashamed, buying it hook line and sinker. Soon it will be time to let her off the hook. Soon but not yet. “—and then, tonight... after everything... I mean I am still a man, Claire. I have my dignity, my pride. Just... let me have my way for once. Let me feel like I have a choice about something. Not out there where it matters, with the Senate and the Agritowers and the V-1 problem.... Just—here in my own home—just... between us. Rather than make me feel like an old fool who's wasting too much of your precious time and still barely getting the job done.... For one night, can't we make believe we're making love?”

He finishes by giving her such a pitiful, longing look that he feels genuinely embarrassed. If that doesn't do it, nothing will.

Silence reigns. Claire is looking down at her plate.

David feels his anger rising again, more at himself than Claire this time. He's overdone it, he decides. He's gone past vulnerable to contemptible. Pathetic. Made her doubt she needs him by her side after all. Insured that one of them will have to die. Well it's not going to be him! That bitch! She's already taken his City and what was left of his family. She's not taking his life too. No matter how brave and innocent she looks stomping through his memories in her father's combat boots. He's killed children before, never mind people who used to be.

Claire nods decisively, then slowly looks up into his eyes. No doubt she sees a very startled, very confused, very guarded man looking back at her her. “You're right,” she says. “I'm sorry. This _is_ your House. I had no... You're important to me, David. Important to Vega. I don't want to you feel like...” Claire shakes her head and laughs. “Alright, you win. It's a date.”

David smiles, pleasantly shocked at how relieved he is. He doesn't want Claire for an enemy, and that's the truth. For more reasons than one. “No it's not,” he says, grinning wider than ever. She is so beautiful, so suddenly warm, sitting there gamely waiting for him to drop the other shoe. He could forget this is all just a game if he's not careful, David warns himself. Could forget that he is dealing with Isabella of the Inquisition and not the sweat young girl Claire used to be. Forget that (as Arika would say) 'it's just work', for both of them.

That's the last thing he needs, to start buying his own bullshit, falling into his own trap. Like William, who is probably dead by now, at least partly because he thought Claire was his 'friend'. This is about getting closer to Claire, not letting Claire get closer to him. It's like they used to say in Washington, before it became quite such an authentic reproduction of a classical ruin: 'If you want a friend in this town, get a dog.' 

Well, David never has liked dogs. Not since he was old enough to tie his own shoes anyway. He's always been more of a cat person. Cats are just easier to respect. You know where you stand with cats. Because cats don't need you, and man they expect the same.

Taking a small remote from the sideboard David lowers the lights to a setting that gives them the flickering quality of synthetic candle light. With a flourish, being ostentatiously cheesy now, he points the control wand and presses another button. It fills the space between their words with the soft sounds of some smooth, cool jazz. “ _Now,”_ he says, with a wicked smirk, “it's a date.”

Claire laughs out loud, exactly as intends. David ought to be pleased with himself. The ear to ear smile on his face ought to feel realer, deeper, less like a mask. Less like the corners of his mouth have been slashed to hide the fact that he is oh so serious. He is winning. Claire is eating from his hand.

“...Thou prayerest a table before me in the presence of my ninnemy...” Says two-and-a-half-year-old William, proudly rushing through the whole recitation of the 23rd Psalm in that 'pledge-a-legence' rhythm. Here-and-now David shuts it out. He needs God's 'goodness and mercy' almost as much as Claire Riesen's friendship. If either were worth a damn, his son would be here right now, not dead or dying in the desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "I Miss You" Barker, Delonge & Hoppus (blink-182)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/blink182/imissyou.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY
> 
> "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/justliketomthumbsblues.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulb8BaUv8mM
> 
> The Twenty-Third Psalm of David  
> King James Version (KJV)
> 
> The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  
> He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  
> He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  
> Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  
> Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  
> Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.


	20. May I Have This Dance?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this won't last very long, but you feel so right, and I could be wrong. Maybe I've been hoping too hard. But I've gone this far, and it's more than I hoped for. Who knows how much further we'll go on. Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone. I'll take my chances. I forgot how nice romance is. I haven't been there for the longest time.  
> ~Billy Joel

The sun has been down for an hour or more. The last golden rays have disappeared. The only light in the room now is the dim, glow of the recessed lighting and the large fireplace. That and the glorious city of Vega glittering outside the sitting room windows.

David is feeling uncharacteristically optimistic, or maybe just more than usually smug. He doesn't try to parse it. A couple of glasses of red wine have mellowed him out a little. Enough that he's enjoying running his game on Queen Isabella again. Not enough that he is in any danger of becoming incautious. Not like the previous night.

He wouldn't mind a little more wine, actually. But he doesn't want to call too much attention to Claire's abstinence. Not now that things are going so surprisingly well.

They've been talking for a good long while now without any miscues on either side. The kind of talking David has always been good at, in this lifetime anyway. Coy. Then not so coy. Flirtatiously joking. Then just plain joking. Then just plain flirting again. Light. Casual. But always circling back to hint at romance with a throbbing undertone of lust.

They talk about things that don't matter. The colors of the perfect sunset. Flowers. Birds. The ocean she has never seen but which he describes from dim memories, freely embellished by his fertile imagination.

They talk about books they've read and all the unimportant ways in which they've been influenced by them. David doesn't tell Claire how C. S. Lewis moved into his ten-year-old brain and set up residence, how his ghost remains long after the likes of Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peal have been exorcised. But he puts her into fits of laughter over the silliness that was the self-help genre; from Martians who just weren't that into Venusians to the ancient secrets of how to lose weight and feel great by eating mountains of steak morning noon and night.

Thankfully, Claire has the good grace not to mention the latest 'most important book in history' to take the Post-War Generation by storm, though David knows from William that she has read it and taken it to heart. _Decay and the Dead World_ is the misanthropic treatise of the snot nosed twenty-something heir of House Thorn, who has been living in the insular micro-verse of Costa Bella for so long that he hardly knows his own generation, let alone the countless generations whom he castigates as 'morally degenerate' with all the reckless abandon of youth and hindsight.

David almost lets a regretful sigh escape at the thought of that self-important dilettante taking his sister's place in the Senate, but he checks himself. There is no point wasting even as much as a sigh against the clearly inevitable. Especially in light of the delicate gossamer of cheerful companionability that he has manged, through careful effort, to weave between them in the last hour.

At least Claire doesn't seem to share Thron's views on music. Or if she does, her diplomatic skills are rapidly improving. “Alright,” she announces jovially, “I know you have something more in mind than conversation and smooth jazz. Something with hauntingly beautiful lyrics of love, perhaps? Are we ready to cut to the big romantic dance scene or am I jumping my cues?”

“Ha, ha,” David says dryly, but he follows that up with a smiling expression of genuine amusement. “Carefully chosen for your listening pleasure,” he declares grinning roguishly, and flourishing his little remote. “Songs to put you in the mood.”

Claire tossed him a wry smile. Somewhere between apprehension and encouragement she say, “This ought to be good.”

~~~~~

They are dancing. Anyone can see it. Well, anyone besides Alex Lannon. Gabriel smiles. His partner needs so much leading that there is no danger in letting his feelings show. This fool couldn't connect four dots to make a box without someone to to guide his hand. Only Michael could have chosen such a 'savior'. Father never would have.

“What's wrong with him?” Alex demands, gesturing emphatically at the old man's living corpse, as if Gabriel might suppose he was speaking of someone else. “What did you do to him?”

Gabriel scoffs. “Have you ever known me to injure a human and leave them alive? No, no. This was...” His smile becomes brighter and his heart is honestly lightened a bit by his own little joke, “...an act of God.”

“Why should I believe you?” Alex demands, stubbornly belligerent.

“I believe I just explained that,” Gabriel points out. “Anyhow, you're missing my point in showing you this. Which is that you cannot rely upon some resurgence of the mythical 'Riesen Line' to support your childish belief that your beloved Claire and her sand castle of a kingdom are safe. My brother, as I you well know, is no longer welcome there either. Which means that I'm fast running out of reasons not to rain distraction down upon Vega until the dead number every last man woman and child, slain like so much cattle.”

“If you lay one finger on Claire, or anyone in Vega,” the puppy snaps and snarls, just like he thinks he's the Big Bad Wolf, “I'll burn every last inch of skin off my body myself.”

Stretching and yawning, only half feigning his boredom, Gabriel thinks what a shame it is that _he_ can't just peel the skin off of the boy and study it in peace and quiet. Or kill him and see if the markings land on someone a bit more reasonable next time. But as with most of Father's plans, it's not quite as simple as that.

There is no escaping the fact that Alex Lannon is the Chosen One, whoever did the choosing. If he dies now, the markings may die with him for all anyone knows. And so far, every indication is that they will reveal their secrets only to him. So, the only real question now is how to best go about helping him learn to read them while at the same time bringing him to understand that the future lies in supporting Gabriel rather than opposing him.

It will take some time, but if Alex's progress so far is any indication, there is plenty of time left before he becomes anything resembling a threat. And he longs for guidance already. A longing which will only grow as he steps further and further from the familiar way, down the twisting path of prophecy.

Meanwhile, Vega won't stand a chance without him. Human's are like sheep. They have to have their anointed lambs. Their bellwethers. Their Judas goats. They are lost without someone to follow. Whether to a green pasture beside still waters or straight into the slaughter house.

Gabriel suppresses his smile when Lannon delivers his next line, right on cue. “I'm not making any deals with you Gabriel! And I'm not leaving here without Noma!” Fooling this child is so simple yet so satisfying. It almost feels like a sin.

~~~~~

“We shouldn't be doing this,” Claire whispers. “My father...” her voice trails off, heavy with emotional significance that less than half matches her words.

“I know,” Alex seems to agree. There is something of an honest struggle in his tone. But they both melt into the embrace just the same. There are no protests beyond these brief, obligatory acknowledgments of the lines being crossed.

They make love with the freedom of innocence. Never dreaming what it will cost or that they will ever care. For a few weeks that stretch into months, love is the only truth in the Universe. The Unifying Theory. The answer to everything. Love eclipses even Vega as the brightest star in the heavens. The one thing that matters.

They never do anything so frivolous as dancing. Every moment is fraught with passion and the danger of being caught. To be caught dancing, alone in her bedroom at night... It would be an equal scandal for a far inferior reward.

“Shall we?” David more declares than asks as the music begins to play. Doing a decent job of smiling back at him, Claire steps out of her memories and into his arms.

“So what are we listening to?” Claire asks, only half hoping he's had the good taste to choose something classic and instrumental.

“Shush,” David whispers, “just listen.”

Sure enough, it's a trite pop song, hardly suitable for dancing by any cultured standard. But it's strains are soft and gentle, and as David takes her in his arms, swaying to it's repetitive rhythm, Claire obligingly sways along. His arms are solid and supportive, his suit cut perfectly to flatter his muscular but not youthful frame. He smells of aftershave, wine, and masculine sweat.

       ♫ _...I get this feeling I may know you as a lover and a friend. ♪_  
             ♫ But this voice keeps whispering in my other ear, ♪  
                    ♫ Tells me I may never see you again.... ♪

Not counting her 'wedding', which she isn't, Claire hasn't danced with a man—at least not one who was more than a polite acquaintance—for a very long time. Now as this simple song eloquently argues it's case on David's behalf, she starts to feel that she's seeing where he's coming from.

       ♫ _...'cause I get a peaceful easy feeling ♪_

 _♫_ _And I know you won't let me down..._ _♪_  
Life is so short and so brutal. Why not make love instead of war? Even if it is only for tonight. It not like she's going to forget that David is a snake and that it's never safe to assume he's on her side in anything short of a pitched battle against Gabriel and his angels. But maybe, under these fairly controlled conditions, it might not be too dangerous to ignore that knowledge for a few hours.

_♫ ...'cause I'm already standing on the ground._ _♪_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sound Track
> 
> "The Longest Time" Billy Joel  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billyjoel/thelongesttime.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XgQhMPeEQ
> 
> "Peaceful Easy Feeling" Jack Tempchin (The Eagles)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/peacefuleasyfeeling.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGljHWCdyEA


	21. The Power of Positive Giving Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Am I more than you bargained for yet?  
> I've been dying to tell you anything you want to hear  
> Cause that's just who I am this week.  
> Lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum.  
> I'm just a notch in your bedpost;  
> But you're just a line in a song.  
> Drop a heart, break a name.  
> We're always sleeping in, and sleeping for the wrong team.  
> We're going down, down in an earlier round,  
> And Sugar, we're going down swinging.  
> I'll be your number one with a bullet;  
> A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it.  
> ~Pete Wentz & Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy)

David's kiss is passionate. Hungry yet deliberate. Once the course of action has been decided, it's as though he never had a doubt. She is all he wants, all he needs. There will be no more pangs of conscience. Nothing short of her flat refusal could stop him now. By having her now, he can have her forever. Her father's objections will fall from the moral high ground into the valley of the unthinkable.

And Eleanor knows now that she could never again refuse him, whatever the consequences. Even if the butterflies in her tummy are beating their giant wings like bats. Even if she can't shake the feeling that this is a sin despite her own best theological arguments to the contrary. Her own need is too strong to stop now.

There is no speaking now beyond a scattering of breathless monosyllables. But in the years to come she will tell him how she feels in this moment. And time and time again, the memory of their flesh and their souls becoming one tonight—together with memories of her vivid retelling, her insistence that she would have faced certain damnation never mind disinheritance rather than turn him away in this moment—will haunt him. They will alternately comfort and torment him with pain and pleasure that he cannot wish away.

And so, when Claire makes her insufferably stupid, flippant remark about trying to get pregnant from secret, forbidden, unmarried sex being the opposite of what everyone does as teenagers, there is really only one thing David can do. He kisses her with the suddenness and commitment of a man overcome, driven mad by desire. It's the only response he can think of that avoids both answering her with a few choice words and giving her a sharp left jab to the nose.

Claire seems surprised for only a tenth of a second. Then she kisses David back with a ferocity that could almost make him believe that she really wants to be here with him like this tonight. Of course, he realizes, that she must be doing pretty much exactly what he's doing. Redirecting her emotional energy from something or someone she'd rather be doing.

It doesn't matter. Whatever she is using for emotional fuel, it's getting the job done. Two minutes of kissing and groping up against the sitting room wall and already David can feel his cock swelling and preparing to rise. Knowing that he should have no problem achieving the bare minimum gives David the confidence to attempt something he never came close to last night.

“Come on,” he says, leading Claire around to sit on the sofa, “I want to show you something.”

“I think I can already see it,” she says with a coy smile that contains only the fainest hint of superiority and almost no condemnation.

David's own smile is knowing and indulgent. “Trust me,” he says, “there's still an awful lot in this life that you have yet to see.” He waves her to take her seat and she obliges, kicking off her shoes.

David can't help letting out a low wicked chuckle of delight as he seats himself on the sitting room rug and runs his fingers up her silk-stockinged legs. Her thighs are bare from her guarders up. The way his fingers slide smoothly from cool silk to warm skin with no pulling and scrabbling at nylon pantyhose is one of the few things that makes David glad to have bid farewell to the Disposable Age.

Claire's panties are also silk, and sheer, making David believe that she did indeed greet him tonight with a slap and an accusation of murder expecting all the while for him to eventually touch her panties. David's grin broadens and he can't help but shake his head slightly. He can't decide if she is a fool or a genius. It does seem to be working out her way, after all.

As David wriggles his finger inside that mere gossamer of an undergarment and begins to explore among her already dampening curls of thick glossy pubic hair to find her most sensitive bits of flesh to stimulate, Claire almost spoils the moment with a slightly bored sigh and a wry comment to the effect that she has been fingered before and that he is therefore showing her nothing new.

“Hide and watch,” David says. An expression he has not heard since before The War. Something about being with her this way tonight (after everything that's happened) makes him feel primitive, bold, and competitive. And he knows damned well that he does have things to show her. Things he doubts Alex Lannon has even imagined.

~~~~~

“Alright,” Alex says. Tossing the word down like a gauntlet of challenge. To a fly on the wall, it would seem to have come out of nowhere. But everyone present knows better. Knows that it is not the challenge, but the answer. “You win, you filthy bastard. Teach me; torture me. It doesn’t matter. I'll stay here as long as you want. If you let Noma go. And leave my city alone.”

Gabriel's smile makes the hairs on the back of Alex's neck stand up. “There, now,” says the Archangel, his voice as smooth as oiled silk, “That wasn't so hard. Was it?”

~~~~~

“Oh! Oh!” the sound that Claire is making is high and breathy, as sharp as a scream and as insubstantial as a sigh. They are both breathing hard, she realizes, practically panting, though she has yet to lay a hand on David where it matters. But what he is doing to her... well.... Claire _has_ been fingered before. She has even had a couple of men, including Alex spend a few seconds or even a minute or two kissing and licking and sucking at her cunt with the enthusiasm (and the skill) of true amateurs.

But this is different. As David's fingers work inside her, stroking and pressing things she didn't even know were in there, his mouth relentlessly assails her swollen clitoris. It strains inside it's fleshy hood, wanting to sit up and beg to be devoured, but there is no need. David knows exactly what he is doing. He pleasures her freely, happily. Claire feels the competitive, even hostile mood that has lingered between them these past few days melt away to nothing as David surrenders to her, wanting nothing more than to give her pleasure. To make her come.

And now Claire is coming. Whispers, sighs, and groans give way to loud, unabashed shouts. “Ah! Oh! Yes! David! David! Please, yes!!!” Somehow, in this moment, it doesn't feel weird or wrong to shout out that particular name. The room is soundproofed better than her own, but it is more than that.

This place is separate, set apart from the rest of Vega. It is David's world. The world of lions and lies and conspiracies. Being here, doing these things, feels almost like playing pretend. If you could pretend your way into having a massive orgasm that left you quivering from head to toe.

~~~~~

When William stumbles and falls, his heart leaps with hope. Even as he rolls down the steep slope of the small ravine he's failed to avoid in the darkness; his eyes well up with tears of thanks for whomever has answered his indiscriminate prayers. But then he hits bottom. And the tiny, life-giving rivulet that he has let himself expect is gone. One more miracle that never happened.

The tears are coming now, thick and fast. William curls on his side, hugging his knees against his chest, watering the desert sand with his own life-sustaining moisture. He sobs harder and harder, crying out in anguish, begging to be saved. But there is no one to hear him. No one to dry his tears.

What's the point of walking any further? William is tired of walking. Tired of trying. Tired of kidding himself.

His father was right. Gabriel doesn't care about him. No matter how many times he's been called 'my son' with all appearance of affection, he knows now that he is nothing more to the Great and Powerful Archangel Gabriel than a once favored pet, if that.

This is it. The End. Exit pursued by a bear. William Whele is going to die in this desert. Gabriel isn't coming to save him. Neither is God Almighty. And neither is his father.

“Mom?” he sniffles, which makes him feel so foolish he could almost laugh through the pain of touching that unhealed wound. A gash carved in his heart by the sword of Gabriel. Not to make him stronger. Not for any reason that has anything to do with William at all.

For some greater plan of his own. Having to do with his own Father. And with Michael. And Alex Lannon. The Chosen One. Chosen by God. Chosen by Fate. And by Michael. And by Gabriel. And by Claire Riesen.

~~~~~

By the time Claire comes, David is drenched in sweat and his heart is beating like the whole percussion section of a major orchestra. The taste and smell of her are driving him half mad with desire. His cock is so hard that he has to unzip and pull it out just to keep it from being painfully squeezed against the inside of his fly.

“Hey, there,” Claire pants out playfully when she sees that he is lying back on the floor stroking himself, “don't finish without me. Then it's all just a waste.”

David sighs. She shouldn't have said that, it's an unpleasant reminder of the circumstances surrounding this otherwise fairly enjoyable sexcapade. Nor should he have sighed. Or stopped stoking himself quite so abruptly. Claire's brow is beginning to furrow. He can't have that. Not this time.

“Well what are you waiting for then?” He challenges teasingly, hoping to distract her before she can over think something that is actually going astonishingly well, all things considered. “Hop aboard before the train leaves the station.”

Laughing, Claire swings herself down from the couch to join him on the floor. They suddenly seem to have too many arms and legs between them. The furniture is too close, close enough to bump knees and elbows. The floor is painfully hard against Davids back even through the softness of the rug. But when Claire straddles him and slides herself down onto his dick, sheathing it in her wet cunt, all of these discomforts fade to meaningless background noise.

Claire rides him at a gallop for a couple of minutes then, just when he is ready to pop, slows her pace, delaying the inevitable. Holly fuck. She actually wants this moment to last, David realizes. Besides being good in and of itself, this means something. It means that Claire is not through with him as an ally.

Unlike last night, she is interested in more than the knowledge of semen being spilt at a certain place and time. She is actually interested in making their alliance work. Even if it is only to avoid having him as an active enemy to contend with. Or for that matter only to keep him close enough to watch for signs that he is still her enemy after all. Even that is worth something, he supposes.

The moment doesn't last much longer at any rate. They have gotten themselves too worked up to maintain a slow and steady pace for long. David cries out inarticulately in the moment of release, followed by several comparatively muted cries of “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” And then barely above as whisper, “Thank you, Claire. That was....” David is amazed to realize that his next word is true, “beautiful.”

Claire smiles down at him and then half rises to flop back onto the couch, exhausted. For a moment everything is quiet, and David wonders if he should get up and make parting pleasantries so that he can fall into bed. But then Claire speaks. “Thank you, David,” she says, sounding warm and legitimately friendly. “I may not have approved of everything you did today or how you did it, but it is a relief to know that there will always be at least one other person looking out for Vega as hard as I am.”

David is glad to be already smiling from ear to ear when she says that. Otherwise he might be accused of gloating at how well these two days of intriguing have worked out. “You and me, kid” he says, imitating Sam Spade before he remembers that the Maltese Falcon is one of many films completely lost to history. But it's been imitated in enough extant material that she laughs, getting the general idea.

Then Claire becomes suddenly serious. “We're both going to need all the friends we can get,” she says, “with Gabriel active again and Michael off God knows where. Hell, for all we know, they might have patched things up and decided to celebrate by wiping us out after all.”

“Yeah,” David says with equal parts apprehension and relish, yawing sleepily over the first word, “But either way, at least we finally get to kick the bastards in the balls again. And soon.”

Claire gives him the furrowed brow again. “And that's good?” she says doubtfully.

“Well it beats sitting here getting complacent for another twenty or thirty years,” David points out mater-of-factly. “Right now we _might_ still have a one in ten chance of beating them. Twenty years from now? Forget it. People'll be drawing cartoons of Caspar the Friendly Angel and whining about defense spending again by then.”

“Ah, there's that old Whele optimism we all depend on,” Claire half sighs. Her mocking is gentle but mocking just the same. And something else. Sad? Bitter? Maybe just tired.

David should let it lie but he too is exhausted. And tiredness is the enemy of tact. “I'm only stating the obvious,” he points out mildly. At least to him it sounds like mildly.

“But you can't actually believe that,” Claire responds with surprising stridency. “If you really think our chances are so bleak, why put your self through... all of this.” She really can be such a child.

David smiles sardonically up at the ceiling. “Well, it's something to do anyway,” he says mock-casually before yawning again. His eyelids are drooping now, and the thought of sleep is glorious to contemplation. The deep, dreamless kind of asleep. Numb. Insensible. This conversation is delaying that, but he can't afford to give Claire the bum’s rush either.

And she is far from satisfied. He can tell by her stiff tone and even stiffer body language as she sits up abruptly and says, “I should go. It's late.” David scrambles to rise from the floor and join her on the couch. He can't let the evening end like this. He has to explain. To smooth things over. But tired as he is, he ends up being honest instead. Maybe, as tired as she is, it doesn't matter.

“Back in the day,” he tells her. “Back when I still believed in things like God and truth and happy endings; I used to read a ton of those stupid motivational books. Thats how I know just how ridiculous they really were. One of my favorites was called the _Power of Positive Thinking_. It was bullshit of course. Written by another True Believer, Norman Vincent Peel.

“This guy was a piece of work. He actually said, and I'm sure he though he meant it, that since he had God on his side, he'd go after a shark in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with him. And, you know, that's supposed to mean that he had all this faith that he's going to get the best of this shark.

“But something occurred to me about the time the world ended. If that shark is the last meal in town and a rowboat is what you've go to go after it in; then you're probably not going to be all that worried that while it's smashes your boat to bits your last thought's gonna be, 'Oh, God! What am I going to do with all this tartar sause?'”

~~~~~

William sits up and wipes his eyes on his sleeve. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. The weight of twenty-five years of expectations is lifted from him shoulders and he begins to walk again. He walks east along the floor of the ravine looking for a place to lie down and rest in the heat of the coming day. A nice, shady place to die.

“Hello, my brother.” says a voice in the darkness. A man's voice, deep and rich and steady. “You can't know how glad we are that you've come to us at last.”

“Who are you?” Willam calls out. Hearing his own voice he notices how calm he is. And how strange that feels. He ought to be beside himself with relief. Or fear. Suspicion? Something. But either this man means him harm or he doesn't. And even if he dies tonight, William realizes; it's no worse than he's already been expecting. Really, he thinks, life has no terror left worth fearing.

And then the man steps into the light. He is slight but tall, with golden-brown skin and long black hair. He is younger than William, but with a sort of Senatorial quality. Gravitas. “You're the One,” he says soberly, certainly. “The One whose coming was foretold. Our Savior.”

~~~~~

Something important is happening. Something that no one is in a position to notice. But like that tree in that forest you never heard fall that one time, it sends out it's shock waves just the same.

Claire Riesen has finished dressing. Has made her decisions and deposited those things which she has determined to leave here.

She turns and looks back one last time at David Whele, her former lover, her former ally, sleeping on the sofa. There is a strange look on her face. Not sadness exactly. It is a combination of regret, relief, and determination.

And as she closes the door and walks calmly to the elevator, as she returns to her own House where there is no master and only one mistress; the blessing of the Angel of the Lord remains upon her; and for the third time in her life, Claire Riesen conceives a child.

~~~~~

The first pale hint of dawn is just appearing in the East when David awakens on the couch in his sitting room. He is alone. He has a hazy recollection of Claire leaving, and on civil terms at that. And of meaning, any moment, to get up and go to bed but never doing it. His belt is gone, but at least his fly is zipped.

Not a bad night work, David tells himself as he yawns and stretches and thinks about going to bed for real, at least for an hour or two. But he knows he's only kidding himself. He'll never get back to sleep this late, especially not with the stiffness he's feeling in his neck and hips and shoulders. He might as well face the fact that the day has already begun.

David clicks the TV on to catch the Morning Report on the 'Independent Channel' and see how yesterday's events are playing. But what they are reporting is so far off script that he clicks over to the Official News Channel just to confirm that they aren't dabbling in disinformation, or worse, political comedy.

But there it is again. This same message. From the mouthpiece of the Senate itself. A recap of the statement released this morning by none other than Lady Claire-Isabella. Thanks to the loyalty and bravery of the good people of Vega, who have gotten themselves so well under control so quickly following yesterday's spontaneous demonstrations in support of the Senate, the sweeping package of reforms that the Lady of the City has planned all along will go forward as scheduled.

In light of Vega's first ever projected Agricultural surplus, there will be a stepped increase in rations for all V1s and V2s and in per-child food subsidies for V3s and V4s. Birth incentives will be extended to V2s for the first time. The Official commentators are officially excited by the news of this new era of prosperity and justice.

But best and most exciting of all is the news that the guardianship on the Agritowers is changing hands. David's ears prick up when he notices them mentioning the well respected House (singular) that will be taking over that sacred trust. But as his glance falls on the coffee table, on the two incongruous objects laying there, a ball of dread and rage forms in the pit of his stomach.

He has not yet asked Claire for Elenore's necklace back. He has not yet spent a moment with her that was not too delicate to support such a request. Yet there it is, lying on top of a single folded sheet of faded construction paper. Even before his own fake journalist reads the real news, David knows the name she authoritatively announces will not be his own.

Once again, The Riesen has bested him, David realizes bitterly. She's going to seize the Agritowers for herself, of course. Who wouldn't? He shouldn't even be surprised by now. She's only doing exactly what her father would. He's _not_ surprised, David tries to tell himself.

But nothing can prepare him for the final blow. Not only is the name on the reporter's lips not Whele; it isn't Riesen either.

It's Thorn.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sugar We're Going Down"  
> Pete Wentz & Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy)  
> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/falloutboy/sugarweregoingdown.html  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhG-vLZrb-g


End file.
